[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 147 (Thursday, December 4, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H8369-H8385]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF THE SENATE AMENDMENT TO H.R. 3979,
PROTECTING VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTERS AND EMERGENCY RESPONDERS ACT OF 2014;
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 5759, PREVENTING EXECUTIVE
OVERREACH ON IMMIGRATION ACT OF 2014; AND PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION
OF H.R. 5781, CALIFORNIA EMERGENCY DROUGHT RELIEF ACT OF 2014
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I
call up House Resolution 770 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 770
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be
in order to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R.
3979) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to ensure
that emergency services volunteers are not taken into account
as employees under the shared responsibility requirements
contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,
with the Senate amendment thereto, and to consider in the
House, without intervention of any point of order, a motion
offered by the chair of the Committee on Armed Services or
his designee that the House concur in the Senate amendment
with an amendment consisting of the text of Rules Committee
Print 113-58 modified by the amendments printed in part A of
the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this
resolution. The Senate amendment and the motion shall be
considered as read. The motion shall be debatable for one
hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking
minority member of the Committee on Armed Services. The
previous question shall be considered as ordered on the
motion to its adoption without intervening motion.
Sec. 2. Upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in
order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 5759) to
establish a rule of construction clarifying the limitations
on executive authority to provide certain forms of
immigration relief. All points of order against consideration
of the bill are waived. The amendment in the nature of a
substitute printed in part B of the report of the Committee
on Rules accompanying this resolution shall be considered as
adopted. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read.
All points of order against provisions in the bill, as
amended, are waived. The previous question shall be
considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any
further amendment thereto, to final passage without
intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally
divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority
member of the Committee on the Judiciary; and (2) one motion
to recommit with or without instructions.
Sec. 3. Upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in
order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 5781) to
provide short-term water supplies to drought-stricken
California. All points of order against consideration of the
bill are waived. The amendment printed in part C of the
report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution
shall be considered as adopted. The bill, as amended, shall
be considered as read. All points of order against provisions
in the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question
shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and
on any further amendment thereto, to final passage without
intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally
divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority
member of the Committee on Natural Resources; and (2) one
motion to recommit with or without instructions.
Sec. 4. The chair of the Committee on Armed Services may
insert in the Congressional Record at any time during the
remainder of the second session of the 113th Congress such
material as he may deem explanatory of defense authorization
measures for the fiscal year 2015.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Florida is recognized for
1 hour.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the
customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr.
McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume.
During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the
purpose of debate only.
General Leave
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Florida?
There was no objection.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 770 provides for the
consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year
2015. It also allows for the consideration of the Executive Amnesty
Prevention Act and for the California Emergency Drought Relief Act, a
bill that would provide short-term water supplies to drought-stricken
California. This combined rule is necessary because Congress is coming
to a close, and we need to get our work done.
One of the outstanding items that is most important to me is the 2015
NDAA. Mr. Speaker, I was proud to stand on the House floor in May when
the House passed its version of the 2015 NDAA. I was happy to highlight
the inclusive and transparent process that
[[Page H8370]]
the Armed Services Committee and the House, as a whole, took in
crafting this year's National Defense Authorization Act.
We held countless hearings and heard hours of testimony from our
combatant commanders. We worked a lot of late nights within the House
Armed Services Committee. In the committee alone, the NDAA was amended
155 times. When the bill moved to the House floor, it was again
amended, and another 160 amendments were considered.
It was careful. It was deliberate. It was an open process. It is
precisely how the House and this Congress should work. When the NDAA
passed this body, I was proud of what we produced, and I was really
proud of the process that we took to get there.
The Senate, though, is absolutely different. As is so often the case,
they didn't act. They either couldn't pass a bill, or they just chose
not to; either way, it is a shame. They left us with a mess now that we
have to resolve. Eventually, a final product was crafted at the last
minute between House and Senate staffers.
It was not done in conference because the Senate never passed a bill.
It was not done in conference because the Senate just ignored the fact
that the NDAA was a priority for this country in order to make sure
that we funded and equipped those soldiers and airmen and sailors and
marines who fight the fight for this country. They ignored it.
When you don't get to conference, which is where you have Members
argue the points of either piece of legislation--whether it is a Senate
bill or a House bill--it really does a disservice to our men and women
who fight for this country because they don't get to hear the arguments
and they don't get to see the arguments. That is unfortunate.
We go through all of the motions. In the House, we get it right, in
the House, through the appropriations process, but then again, through
the process of the NDAA, we get it right. We have those hearings. We
take the testimony, and we listen to those who are most affected. The
Senate, I don't know what they do, but they honestly, in my estimation,
didn't care enough to get it done for whatever reason.
As a member of HASC, we did an awful lot of work just to get a
product to the floor, and when it left HASC, it was unanimous. When it
came to the floor, there were 160 times that people had the opportunity
to amend it and change it and prove it and add things that they thought
were necessary for the defense of their country. Once again, the Senate
just ignored that process, and that is unfortunate.
Congress, as a whole, is harmed by this process. More importantly, it
is the troops who are harmed by a process that is broken. It is the
troops. We are not out there in harm's way, but they are. We owe them
better. I think the House has done that. I think the House has actually
done everything in its power to make it right with the troops whom we
put in harm's way, but the Senate doesn't seem to care, and that is
troubling to me.
I am concerned about our warfighters. We are their voice. As Members
of Congress, we are their voice. We are the elected Representatives of
the people, but they are citizens, too, so we are representing them. We
are their voice, and they need to be heard on every issue.
Unfortunately, the NDAA is not everything that everybody wants, and I
get it. It is always a compromise, and I get that, but we need to show
more solidarity with our warfighters, so they know that their voice is
being heard here in the Capitol. I fear that, because the Senate
botched the process, their voice didn't come through as loudly as it
should have.
Mr. Speaker, the rule also allows the House to consider the Executive
Amnesty Prevention Act. This legislation, if enacted, would nullify the
President's recent executive action.
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the policy goal of
the President's, every Member of Congress ought to be concerned about
what it means when he takes that type of action, of unilaterally
ignoring Congress. If you look at our article I powers, we are elected
to pass laws. We are elected to do that.
The President is elected to faithfully execute the laws that are
passed by Congress. It doesn't matter if the House did or did not do
what the President requested. It doesn't give him the unilateral action
to go ahead and say, ``Do you know what? I can just do it on my own.''
That is what this bill addresses.
This Nation has benefited by this delicate balance that we have in
our government. It benefits every day when we do things the right way.
The Constitution is our guiding principle. It is our guiding document.
You just can't say, ``Do you know what? I want to do it differently
because I disagree with what the legislative branch is or is not
doing.'' That is not appropriate. It is not the way the Founding
Fathers crafted it.
The Executive does not have the power to write law; we do. We need to
reestablish our rights as elected Representatives of the people to
craft laws that affect the people of the United States of America.
It is really just beyond frustrating as all of us, Democrats and
Republicans alike, should be jealously guarding our article I powers
because it matters not whether it is a Republican President or a
Democratic President. This institution matters. Otherwise, what are we
doing here? Otherwise, why are the American people voting every 2 years
to send Representatives to this body to ensure that the Constitution is
upheld and followed?
It is not meaningless. It is important. As I said before, the
legislative versus the Executive issue shouldn't be a Democrat versus a
Republican issue. It should be the fact that we should guard the rights
and privileges that have been extended to us because of our being
elected to this body.
I support the rule because it is important that we have a healthy
debate on all of the issues that have been outlined, and I urge my
colleagues to do the same.
I reserve the balance of my time.
{time} 1030
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr.
Nugent) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself
such time as I may consume.
(Mr. McGOVERN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this
convoluted closed rule, which includes a huge defense bill, a partisan
anti-immigrant bill, a California water bill, and, from out of nowhere,
an Arizona land exchange bill all in one.
The gentleman from Florida is praising this Congress as somehow being
open. The fact of the matter is this is the most closed Congress in the
history of the United States of America. This is appalling the way this
House of Representatives has been run. Routinely, important, vital
issues are shut out from debate on the House floor, and what we are
talking about here today is no exception.
The rule includes the FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act. I am
pleased that the NDAA establishes the Blackstone River Valley National
Historical Park, but this version of the NDAA also authorizes over $500
billion for the Pentagon's base budget and, on top of that, includes an
additional $63.7 billion for the Pentagon slush fund to finance the
continuing war in Afghanistan and the new war in Iraq and Syria against
the Islamic State.
Once again, Congress is failing to do its job because, once again,
this bill continues to fund two wars for years to come without Congress
authorizing either one.
First, Afghanistan. We are ostensibly pulling out of Afghanistan in
just 3 weeks, but, in fact, we are leaving about 10,000 troops behind
for the next several years. Congress has the responsibility to
authorize this new mission. We just can't continue the same-old, same-
old.
Mr. Speaker, I will insert, for the Record, a Reuters article,
entitled, ``Obama Widens Post-2014 Combat Role for U.S. Forces in
Afghanistan.''
It doesn't sound like we are winding down anything.
[From reuters.com, Nov. 23, 2014]
Obama Widens Post-2014 Combat Role for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan
(By Steve Holland and Mirwais Harooni)
President Barack Obama has approved plans to give U.S.
military commanders a wider role to fight the Taliban
alongside Afghan forces after the current mission ends
[[Page H8371]]
next month, a senior administration official said.
The decision made in recent weeks extends previous plans by
authorizing U.S. troops to carry out combat operations
against the Taliban to protect Americans and support
Afghanistan's security forces as part of the new ISAF
Resolute Support mission next year.
Obama had announced in May that U.S. troop levels would be
cut to 9,800 by the end of the year, by half again in 2015
and to a normal embassy presence with a security assistance
office in Kabul by the end of 2016.
Under that plan, only a small contingent of 1,800 U.S.
troops was limited to counter terrorism operations against
remnants of al Qaeda. The new orders will also allow
operations against the Taliban.
``To the extent that Taliban members directly threaten the
United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan or provide
direct support to al Qaeda, we will take appropriate measures
to keep Americans safe,'' the official said.
A report by the New York Times late on Friday said the new
authorization also allows the deployment of American jets,
bombers and drones.
The announcement was welcomed by Afghan police and army
commanders after heavy losses against the Taliban this
summer.
``This is the decision that we needed to hear . . . We
could lose battles against the Taliban without direct support
from American forces,'' said Khalil Andarabi, police chief
for Wardak province, about an hour's drive from the capital
and partly controlled by the Taliban.
Afghan government forces remain in control of all 34
provincial capitals but are suffering a high rate of
casualties, recently described as unsustainable by a U.S.
commander in Afghanistan.
More than 4,600 Afghan force members have been killed since
the start of the year, 6.5 percent more than a year ago.
Despite being funded with more than $4 billion in aid this
year, police and soldiers frequently complain they lack the
resources to fight the Taliban on their own.
``Right now we don't have heavy weapons, artillery and air
support. If Americans launch their own operations and help
us, too, then we will be able to tackle Taliban,'' said
senior police detective Asadullah Insafi in eastern Ghazni
province.
The Taliban said it is undeterred by the U.S. announcement.
``They will continue their killings, night raids and
dishonor to the people of Afghanistan in 2015. It will only
make us continue our jihad,'' Taliban spokesman Zabihullah
Mujajhid said.
Mr. McGOVERN. Twice now, Ranking Member Adam Smith, Congressman
Walter Jones, and I have tried to offer an amendment requiring a vote
next March to authorize any post-2014 deployment of U.S. troops in
Afghanistan, and twice, the leadership of this House has refused to
allow our amendments to come to the floor.
What is the leadership afraid of? Why do they refuse to allow a
debate and a vote on authorizing America's post-2014 mission in
Afghanistan? Don't we owe it to the troops who are going to be there?
Don't we owe it to their families?
The gentleman from Florida talks about that we need to be the voice
of our troops. Well, we are not the voice of our troops. We are ducking
these important debates. It is shameful. We are letting our troops
down. We are better than this, and we ought to be debating and voting
on these important issues.
We are also at war against the Islamic State. On July 25, this House
overwhelmingly passed a resolution that I offered that if the U.S. were
involved in sustained combat operations in Iraq, Congress should vote
and enact an authorization. Mr. Speaker, 370 Members of this House
voted for that resolution.
Two weeks after that vote, we began bombing Iraq. We have been
bombing Iraq nearly every day for the past 4\1/2\ months. We have
increased the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to around 3,000. On
September 22, we started bombing Syria. We have flown scores of bombing
missions over Syria over the last 2 months.
We bomb Iraq and Syria as part of our coordinated military operations
with the Iraqi military and Kurdish military forces. We bomb to protect
infrastructure, and we bomb to target towns and camps harboring Islamic
State forces. If that is not being involved in sustained combat
operations, I don't know what is.
The war against ISIL began under this Congress. It has escalated
under this Congress. It has expanded from Iraq to Syria and now, maybe,
to Turkey under this Congress. It is the responsibility, the
constitutional responsibility of this Congress, the 113th Congress, to
authorize it. And yet while the bill authorizes the money to carry out
this war, it does not allow us a ``yes'' or ``no'' vote on actually
authorizing the war.
Now, last night in the Rules Committee, I offered amendments to limit
funding for the Iraq/Syria war until Congress enacted an authorization
to ensure that U.S. ground troops in Iraq would not engage in combat
operations. Both were rejected. Both were rejected.
Mr. Speaker, enough is enough. It is the institutional and
constitutional duty of the Congress of the United States to decide
matters of war and peace. It is time for the leadership of this House
to step up to the plate and bring an authorization to the floor. It is
time to debate it and vote on it before the 113th Congress adjourns. No
more excuses. No more whining. Just do it.
The rule also includes H.R. 5759, the Preventing Executive Overreach
on Immigration Act. Give me a break, Mr. Speaker. Give me a break. For
over a year and a half, a Senate-passed bipartisan comprehensive
immigration reform bill has been awaiting House action. All it needs is
a House Republican leadership with the political backbone to take it up
because we all know that the votes are there. We could pass it today or
tomorrow or next week. We could put an end to all this rancor, all the
nasty sound bites by simply doing what we are paid to do: debating and
voting on major pieces of legislation.
I would say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, if you
don't want the Executive to take administrative action, then start
acting like a real Congress. There is still time before we leave town
for the holidays. Stop this farce. Take up the Senate bill, pass it,
and send it to the President for signature.
Mr. Speaker, whether it comes to issues of war and peace or whether
it comes to major issues like comprehensive immigration reform, the
answer is simple: all we need to do is our job.
I urge my colleagues to defeat this ridiculous triple-closed rule,
and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
Oklahoma (Mr. Cole).
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Florida for yielding.
I want to talk a little bit about the legislation and then the rule
itself.
It is not unusual that we are at a difficult moment near the end of
the session and have must-pass legislation. And the main portion of
this legislation, the National Defense Authorization Act, is actually
very good and very bipartisan. Frankly, it was passed out of committee
with overwhelming votes from both sides of the aisle. We all know that
the chairman and the ranking member, who are two of our most
distinguished Members, work very well together. Like anything in a $500
billion bill, I could quibble with this or that, but the reality is I
favor the legislation. I have no problem supporting it and the rule
that moves it forward.
I also want to agree with my friend from Massachusetts (Mr.
McGovern). I have the same concerns he does about the authorization for
military action. I jointly signed a letter with him to that effect. I
look forward to continuing to work with him to that effect because he
is precisely right that we need to address this. I think the
appropriate way is a full authorization debate, not an amendment, but
my friend certainly states his case eloquently.
We also have a major lands bill appropriated with this. Most of that
bill is really pretty noncontroversial. Most of it went through
committee or a lot of it across the floor. There are a lot of good
things in there and things that I find very easy to support.
There is a particular portion, however, that I do oppose, and that is
section 3003, as I recall. But it is basically a copper mining issue in
southeast Arizona, where we have two Indian tribes that have sacred
sites in this area, on what is now Federal land, and they have opposed
this legislation.
Now, this legislation was debated on this floor in stand-alone
legislation and was then pulled because the votes were not here to pass
the legislation. So we are passing, by rule, a bill that the majority
in this House did not support.
Fortunately, the bill is somewhat different. There are a couple of
things that have been added: a consultation
[[Page H8372]]
with the tribes in question, a stronger environmental review. Whether
this is window dressing or sincere is hard to know. But I am going to
urge the tribes in question to use the consultation fully and
aggressively, and I am going to urge the Federal agencies that are
responsible for the environmental considerations here to be
extraordinarily aggressive in their oversight. We do have a trust
responsibility when it comes to sacred sites on Federal lands--or non-
Federal lands, for that matter. We have a governmental responsibility.
This is a bill, remember, that did not make it across this floor, and
it has never been considered by the United States Senate on the floor.
Frankly, if that bill couldn't make it across this House, I very
seriously doubt it would have made it across the floor in the Senate.
So we really have the rules in the sense, I think, thwarting the
majority opinion inside the Congress, and that is unfortunate.
However, speaking personally, when you serve as a member of the
majority on the Rules Committee--and I was given extraordinary latitude
last night to try to change this rule in a way that would have stripped
this particular provision and did vote against the rule in committee--
when you are given that responsibility, once the committee makes its
decision, you also have a responsibility to accept the decision that
has been made.
I also have the great privilege, on my side of the aisle, of serving
as a deputy whip, and that usually requires that you support the rule,
that you support your party, which is pretty routine on procedural
matters on both sides of the aisle. In 12 years, I have never voted
against a rule that my own party put on the floor, even if I had
disagreements with it. And I do have disagreements; but in the end, I
will support the rule, with reservations.
I hope that the provisions that are in the law--to be fair to the
authors that have been added since that legislation--will give us some
avenues, but I think we ought to reflect long and hard over using this
kind of procedural mechanism in this way.
On our side of the aisle, we would like to think we are going to be a
different kind of Congress and have been a different kind of Congress,
and we can always play the back-and-forth. We have got plenty of
gotchas for the other side in terms of how they used rules when they
were in the majority. But if we are going to do things differently, it
needs to start someplace. So I wanted to come down here and highlight
this as, I think, a mistake but make it clear, at the end of the day, I
support the rule that the committee arrived at.
I will be looking forward to working with my friend from
Massachusetts on his particular concerns about authorization. I will be
looking forward and really watching this issue in Arizona with a great
deal of concern, and I will continue to push aggressively that we
change the manner in which we operate.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, the American people would be better served
if we addressed our broken immigration system. And if we defeat the
previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up
H.R. 15, the immigration reform bill.
To discuss our proposal, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Colorado (Mr. Polis), a member of the Rules Committee.
Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, the motion that the gentleman from
Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) will make might be our last opportunity in
this Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. We have a
bipartisan bill right here in the House of Representatives. It is
called H.R. 15. It is almost identical to the Senate bill that passed
with more than two-thirds Republicans and Democrats supporting
immigration reform.
What does that mean? This is a bill that secures our border. This is
a bill that creates over 200,000 jobs for American citizens. This is a
bill that restores the rule of law. This is a bill that has support
from the faith community, from the business community, from the labor
community, from the law enforcement community. This is a bill that
provides a pathway to citizenship for de facto Americans who have lived
here, in some cases, for decades, for all of their adult lives. By
defeating the previous question, we will have the opportunity to pass
that bill.
Mr. Speaker, there is sufficient support here in this body among
Democrats and Republicans to pass this bill now for immigration reform,
H.R. 15, and actually solve this issue. Because, you know what? There
is one thing that I think Democrats and Republicans can agree on: what
the President has done with his executive actions doesn't solve the
entire immigration issue. Yes, people are discussing whether they think
it helps or hurts, whether they think it is illegal or legal--even
though it is clearly contemplated in statute with regard to the
authority given to the Secretary with regard to prioritization--but it
doesn't solve it.
The President alone can't establish border security. We need an
appropriation and a plan from the United States Congress--that we have
in the bill that will pass if we can defeat the previous question, per
the Mr. McGovern's motion.
Mr. Speaker, immigration is a challenging issue for our country and
is challenging for a lot of reasons. We are a nation of laws. We are
also a nation of immigrants. We need to reconcile those two. We need to
ensure that we have an immigration system that reflects our values as
Americans, and that is good for our economy and for job creation and
restores the rule of law. We can accomplish that right here, right now;
send the bill back to the Senate, where I believe they will ratify it,
and on to the President to address this issue once and for all, rather
than have a sideshow of a discussion about just fixing a little bit
around the edges.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Kentucky (Mr. Massie).
{time} 0945
Mr. MASSIE. Mr. Speaker, on June 19, 2014, the House of
Representatives passed a historic amendment to the fiscal year 2015
Department of Defense Appropriations Act. The amendment was offered by
myself and Ms. Lofgren, along with several of our House colleagues.
Our amendment blocks government bureaucrats from performing backdoor
warrantless searches of the private email content and telephone calls
of U.S. citizens. The amendment also prohibits the NSA and CIA from
requiring technology companies to place backdoors in their products.
Our amendment passed the House by an overwhelming bipartisan and
veto-proof majority of 293-123. Now, some of those who did not vote for
the amendment told me that they thought the proper place for this
amendment was in the NDAA, not in an appropriations act, and I tend to
agree with them. I would like to see that in the NDAA, but our only
opportunity was to put it into the appropriations bill.
There has been some discussion, unfortunately, of recent talk, if you
will, that this amendment will be stripped from the omnibus. If that is
the case, I think it does belong in the NDAA this year because this is
the bill that authorizes these programs that we have heard so much
about.
Americans were horrified to learn that the government was spying on
them without even bothering to get a warrant, and the overwhelming
number of Members who voted in favor of the Massie-Lofgren amendment
did so because they listened to their constituents. I would hope we
would listen to our constituents today, include provisions to reform
the NSA, particularly the provision to stop the backdoor warrantless
spying on Americans in this NDAA.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time, and I urge you
to include this in the underlying bill.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman
from California (Mrs. Capps).
Mrs. CAPPS. I thank my colleague for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight one provision of this National
Defense Authorization Act that hasn't gotten much attention but that
will make an important difference in the lives of many new moms who
happen to be in the military.
Over the years I am proud to have worked with my colleagues to make
our military and veterans' health care programs more responsive to the
unique needs of women. Far too many
[[Page H8373]]
barriers to optimal health care remain, and that is why I am so pleased
that my TRICARE Moms Improvement Act was incorporated into this bill.
Health care providers overwhelmingly recommend that new moms
exclusively breast-feed their infants. But we know that despite their
good intentions, far too many women who want to breast-feed their
babies find the cost of lactation supplies and the lack of support to
be a barrier to that choice. And while most women covered by private
insurance do have access to these services, women with TRICARE do not.
My TRICARE Moms Improvement Act included in this year's defense
authorization bill would end that disparity and that discrepancy. We
must do all we can to support our servicemembers and their families,
and this is one small but meaningful way to do just that.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa
(Mr. King).
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman for yielding and the
privilege to address you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the underlying bill that we refer to
around this Hill now as the Yoho bill, H.R. 5759. I appreciate the
gentleman from Florida for drafting this bill. He and I are consistent
in our philosophy, our constitutional understanding, and our approach.
I would say, though, that the bill moved a little bit from the time
that it was first presented. It had the word ``amnesty'' in the title.
It said, ``Preventing Executive Amnesty on Immigration Act.'' Now it
says, ``Preventing Executive Overreach.'' This tones it down a little
for me.
It also addresses the subject called prosecutorial discretion. And it
says in the bill it ``ought to be applied on a case-by-case basis and
not to whole categories of persons.'' Mr. Speaker, prosecutorial
discretion can only be applied on a case-by-case basis. It cannot
create whole classes or categories of persons and exempt them from the
application of the law.
So I want to make sure this Congressional Record is clear that this
bill doesn't endorse the idea that we are suggesting prosecutorial
discretion is anything other than what it actually is, and that is on a
case-by-case basis.
It says also:
No provision shall be interpreted or applied to authorize
the executive branch to exempt categories of persons
unlawfully present.
I agree with that. But:
Any action by the executive branch with the purpose of
circumventing the objectives of the preceding sentence shall
be null and void and without legal effect.
That is nice. This bill amounts to a resolution, a resolution of
disagreement with the President. I don't think it makes it clear enough
that the President has clearly violated the Constitution of the United
States. I don't want this to be in the Record as something that is
ambiguous.
I would also point out, Mr. Speaker, the President knows the law. He
taught the Constitution for 10 years. For 22 times he said--at least
that we know of--into the public record, into the videotape, that he
didn't have the authority to do what he did. And so if the President
has so little respect for his own opinions, my point would be, how
would he have a lot of respect for this bill? And so I encourage the
gentleman. I thank him for offering it.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds.
Mr. Speaker, I want to just be clear about one thing. The President
did not create this problem. The cowardice of the House Republican
leadership created this crisis. Over 1\1/2\ years after the Senate
passed an overwhelmingly bipartisan, comprehensive immigration bill,
this House, Mr. Speaker, has failed to bring it up and debate it. If
there is a crisis of leadership, then it is here in this House.
At this point, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms.
Titus).
Ms. TITUS. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to highlight a significant provision in the
defense authorization bill, and this is language that is based on H.R.
2015, the Las Vegas Valley Public Lands and Tule Springs Fossil Beds
National Monument.
This important legislation will enact a number of land conveyances
across southern Nevada, including over 400 acres for the Nellis Air
Force Base used for critical training missions. In addition, the
legislation will protect nearby lands that contain fossil beds dating
back thousands of years to the Ice Age.
Mr. Speaker, this bipartisan legislation enjoys the support of the
entire Nevada delegation as well as the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of
Commerce, county and local officials, education institutions, local
tribal governments, and area environmentalists.
For years we have been working with leadership in the House and
Senate to advance this legislation, which will strengthen our national
security mission at Nellis, promote economic development for southern
Nevada, and preserve our national history for generations to come.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), the distinguished ranking member of the
Committee on the Budget.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, this legislation, the defense
authorization bill, is now 1,648 pages, and we are being told on the
floor of the House that we either vote for the whole thing or nothing
because we are not given a chance for any amendments in between. There
are some hugely consequential decisions being made for our national
defense in this bill on issues of war and peace.
It was just last September the President increased the number of
American troops in Iraq to help train and equip the Iraqi and Kurdish
forces there. Mr. McGovern, Mr. Jones, and I have a bipartisan
amendment saying that U.S. ground forces in Iraq should not be engaged
in combat operations going forward. The President has asserted
authority under the AUMF. That is a blank check. We don't think there
should be a blank check for the executive. This body should vote to
make it clear that U.S. forces can't be involved in another ground war
in Iraq.
There is also a bipartisan amendment offered by Mr. Dent from
Pennsylvania, myself, and others that says we should vote on the
question of whether we should now arm the so-called moderate Syrian
rebels for 2 years at a price of $500 million or up. Now, whether you
are for or against it, we should have a vote.
Mr. Speaker, I happen to think it is a bad idea. We are not going to
be able to successfully micromanage the Syrian civil war. The target of
those forces is not ISIS. So in the process, we are actually going to
be inadvertently strengthening ISIS. But whether you agree with me on
that or not, for goodness' sake, we should have an amendment that has
this body make a choice. That is what we are here for, I thought,
making important policy decisions for the country on questions of war
and peace. We owe it to our troops, and we owe it to the American
people to actually debate and vote on these consequential decisions
instead of a 1,600-plus page bill that comes to the floor and doesn't
give us that opportunity.
So since we don't have that opportunity, I am going to vote ``no'' on
the defense authorization bill. I don't like to do that, but it is
irresponsible and reckless for this House not to vote on these
important issues separately.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Sessions), the chairman of the Rules Committee.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from
Florida--who, by the way, Mr. Speaker, has three sons who serve or who
have served in the United States military--who yesterday so adequately
expressed really the concerns of not only a Member of Congress, a
father, a proud American, but of a man who wants and needs America to
lead in this world rather than follow.
Yesterday--or it turned into last night--in the Rules Committee, we
spent a good bit of time that I think, Mr. Speaker, was very
thoughtful, and on a bipartisan basis Members of this body expressed
deep and dear reservations about actually where we are as a country,
where our men and women are in harm's way, the mission and the purpose
of what we are attempting to accomplish overseas.
Mr. Speaker, America has adversaries and also enemies. We have people
who would do terrible things not just to their own people in foreign
countries, but who want to engage the
[[Page H8374]]
United States to draw us into further conflict. The United States is
without, in my opinion, and I think others', a strategic and tactical
plan that would effectively be understood by Congress and the American
people.
Yesterday--that turned into last night--we had Members of this body
on a bipartisan basis who showed up at the Rules Committee to politely
and professionally express their reservations about our funding through
the National Defense Authorization Act what is considered to be a year
or 2-year long process of funding without a clear mark, a clear
understanding, about what we are agreeing to.
Mr. Speaker, I found myself not just agreeing with the likes of Mr.
McGovern and others who spoke about a need for us to know what we are
doing, but I found great confidence when we had the gentleman from
Colorado, Mike Coffman, who showed up and spoke about the unrelenting
and unending fraud on behalf of other countries taking American tax
dollars.
The problem is that we are debating this without any real discussion
because our friends on the other side of this building are not willing
to engage us on the issue. So we are viewing this in a difficult way
today.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. NUGENT. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the gentleman from Florida, a member of the
Rules Committee.
I want to show up and to say to you, Mr. Speaker, the American
people, and Members--as they are trying to prepare for what we are
attempting to do today with this document--that in January there is
going to be a reorganization and discussion around this exact same
issue where we will have a partner in the United States Senate with
thoughtful content.
Mr. Speaker, I will end here. If the Chinese, the Russians, and the
Iranians can establish a policy of where they are in these dangerous
areas, the United States should also. We need leadership, and it will
happen starting January 5.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words of the distinguished chairman of
the Rules Committee. And he is correct. We were in a meeting yesterday
for quite some time--over 6 hours--in the Rules Committee discussing
multiple amendments on the defense bill, on the immigration bill, and
on other things as well.
{time} 1000
My problem with what happened yesterday is that, after all that talk,
we got nothing; not a single amendment is being made in order here. We
have yet another closed process.
I appreciate the fact that the Senate can be difficult, but the
Senate is not the problem when it comes to the House of Representatives
debating and voting up or down on an AUMF on Iraq or Syria--or any
other war for that matter. We can do that ourselves. We don't need
anybody to tell us we can do it. We don't need the White House to tell
us we can do it. It is our constitutional responsibility.
Yes, we had a long meeting. We had a lot of discussion. It was a
spirited discussion, but at the end of it all, we got nothing. I regret
that very much because the issues that we talked about last night are
very, very serious, and we owe it to the American people, we owe it to
the men and women who we put in harm's way to have these serious
discussions, and we are not having that on the floor today.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms.
McCollum).
Ms. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. McGovern. I would like the
Record to reflect my strong agreement with the views expressed by the
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) earlier about not having
amendments in which we can fully discuss as the House the 2-year
funding for the Syrian rebel army and also to make sure that we do not
have combat troops actively engaged in Iraq.
Mr. Speaker, I am rising right now to strongly state my deep
disappointment in a version of the Southeast Arizona Land Exchange Act
that was included in the National Defense Authorization.
Here is the National Defense Authorization bill, and in here are some
land bills. Now, one of the land bills in particular that has been
included in here is extremely controversial. It is nongermane, and it
will lead to the destruction of sacred sites for two major tribal
nations in our country. When it does that, when it destroys these
sacred sites, it benefits a foreign-owned mining company with troubling
ties to the Government of Iran.
I would like to submit for the Record a long list of tribal
organizations and other groups who oppose this proposal because of its
direct disregard for Native American sacred and cultural sites, Mr.
Speaker.
Tribes and Tribal Orgs Opposed to H.R. 687, SE AZ Land Exchange
Tribal Organizations
National Congress of American Indians--the oldest and
largest organization representing tribes across the country
National Indian Gaming Association--represents 184 tribes
across the country
Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona--represents 20 tribes in
Arizona
Apache Coalition--represents Apache tribes in Arizona, New
Mexico, Oklahoma
Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada--represents 27 tribes in
Nevada
United South and Eastern Tribes--represents 26 tribes in
Maine, New York Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi,
Louisiana, Florida, and Texas and based in Tennessee
California Association of Tribal Governments--represents
tribal governments in California
Midwest Alliance of Sovereign Tribes--represents 35 tribes
in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa
Affiliated Tribes of the Northwest Indians--represents 57
tribes located in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Southeast
Alaska, Northern California, and Western Montana
All Indian Pueblo Council--represents 20 pueblos located in
New Mexico and Texas
Eight Northern Indian Pueblos of New Mexico
Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association--represents 16
tribes in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska
Coalition of Large Tribes--represents 14 tribes in North
Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico,
Utah, Washington
Alaska Inter-Tribal Council
Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission
Alabama
Poarch Band of Creek Indians, Alabama
Arizona
San Carlos Apache Tribe, Arizona
Hopi Tribe, Arizona
Ak-Chin Indian Community, Arizona
Ft. McDowell Yavapai Nation, Arizona
White Mountain Apache Tribe, Arizona
Colorado River Indian Tribes, Arizona
Cocopah Indian Tribe, Arizona
Hopi Tribe, Arizona
Hualapai Tribe, Arizona
Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Arizona
Tohono O'odham Nation, Arizona
Quechan Indian Tribe, Arizona
Tonto Apache Tribe, Arizona
Yavapai-Apache Nation, Arizona
Yavapai Prescott Indian Tribe, Arizona
Havasupai Tribe, Arizona
Ft. Mojave Indian Tribe, Arizona, California, and Nevada
Navajo Nation Council, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah
California
Susanville Indian Rancheria, California
Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, California
Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake, California
Hopland Band of Pomo Indians, California
Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians, California
California Valley Miwok Tribe, California
Santa Rosa Band of Cahuilla Indians, California
San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, California
Connecticut
Mohegan Tribe, Connecticut
Florida
Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida
Idaho
Coeur d'Alene Tribe, Idaho
Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Idaho
Kansas
Kickapoo Indian Nation, Kansas
Louisiana
Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, Louisiana
Tunica-Biloxi Tribe, Louisiana
Maine
Penobscot Indian Nation, Maine
Massachusetts
Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, Massachusetts
Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Massachusetts
Michigan
Saginaw Chippewa Tribe, Michigan
Sault Ste. Marie Tribe, Michigan
Minnesota
Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, Minnesota
Prairie Island Indian Community, Minnesota
Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Indian Community, Minnesota
Mississippi
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Mississippi
[[Page H8375]]
Nebraska
Santee Sioux Tribe, Nebraska
Nevada
Moapa Band of Paiutes, Nevada
Shoshone-Paiute Tribes, Nevada and Idaho
Walker River Paiute Tribe, Nevada
New Mexico
Jicarilla Apache Nation, New Mexico
Mescalero Apache Tribe, New Mexico
Pueblo of Zuni, New Mexico
Pueblo of Tesuque, New Mexico
Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico
Pueblo of Acoma, New Mexico
Pueblo of Laguna, New Mexico
Pueblo of Zuni, New Mexico
New York
Seneca Nation, New York
North Carolina
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, North Carolina
Oklahoma
Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma
Ft. Sill Apache Tribe, Oklahoma and New Mexico
Osage Nation, Oklahoma
Oregon
Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians
Coquille Indian Tribe, Oregon
Rhode Island
Narragansett Tribe, Rhode Island
South Carolina
Catawba Indian Nation, South Carolina
South Dakota
Oglala Sioux Tribe, South Dakota
Washington
Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Washington
Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, Washington
Puyallup Tribe of Indians, Washington
Quinault Indian Nation, Washington
Hoh Indian Nation, Washington
Samish Indian Nation, Washington
Suquamish Indian Tribe, Washington
Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Washington
Wisconsin
Bad River Band of Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians,
Wisconsin
Ho-Chunk Nation, Wisconsin
Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians,
Wisconsin
Oneida Nation, Wisconsin
Sokaogan Chippewa Community, Wisconsin
Stockbridge-Munsee Community, Band of Mohican Indians,
Wisconsin
Other Groups Opposing H.R. 687/S. 339, SE AZ Land Exchange
Town of Superior
Queen Valley Golf Association, Queen Valley, Arizona
Queen Valley Homeowners Association, Queen Valley, Arizona
Peridot Strategic Tribal Empowerment Prevention Plan
Arizona Mining Reform Coalition
American Lands
Access Fund
Arizona Mountaineering Club
Arizona Native Plant Society
Arizona Wildlife Federation
The American Alpine Club--Golden, CO
Center for Biological Diversity
Chiricahua-Dragoon Conservation Alliance
Comstock Residents Association--Virginia City, NV
Concerned Citizens and Retired Miners Coalition--Superior,
AZ
Concerned Climbers of Arizona, LLC
Earthworks
Endangered Species Coalition
Environment America
Environment Arizona
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Friends of Ironwood Forest--Tucson, AZ
Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness
Friends of The Cloquet Valley State Forest
Friends of the Kalmiopsis--Grants Pass, OR
Friends of Queen Creek
Gila Resources Information Project
Grand Canyon Chapter--Sierra Club
Great Basin Mine Watch
Groundwater Awareness League--Green Valley, AZ
High Country Citizens' Alliance--Crested Butte, CO
Information Network for Responsible Mining--Telluride, CO
Keepers of the Water--Manistee, MI
League of Conservation Voters
Maricopa Audubon Society--Phoenix, AZ
Ministers' Conference of Winston-Salem, North Carolina &
Vicinity
The Morning Star Institute--Washington, D.C.
Mount Graham Coalition--Arizona
Natural Resources Defense Council
National Wildlife Federation
Progressive National Baptist Convention
Religion and Human Rights Forum for the Preservation of
Native American Sacred Sites and Rights
Rock Creek Alliance--Sandpoint, ID
San Juan Citizens Alliance--Durango, CO
Save Our Cabinets--Heron, MT
Save Our Sky Blue Waters--Minnesota
Save the Scenic Santa Ritas
Sierra Club
Sky Island Alliance
The Lands Council--Spokane, WA
Tucson Audubon Society
Water More Precious Than Gold
Western Lands Exchange Project--Seattle, WA
Wilderness Workshop
Wisconsin Resources Protection Council--Tomahawk, WI
Yuma Audubon Society
Tribes and Tribal Orgs with Resolutions/Letters Opposing H.R. 1904 in
the 112th Congress--Same Bill as H.R. 687
National Congress of American Indians
Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona
Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada
United South and Eastern Tribes
Midwest Alliance of Sovereign Tribes
Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association--represents 16
tribes in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska
All Indian Pueblo Council
Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, Inc.
Affiliated Tribes of the Northwest Indians
Association on American Indian Affairs, Maryland
Arizona
San Carlos Apache Tribe, Arizona
White Mountain Apache Tribe, Arizona
Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Arizona
Yavapai-Apache Nation, Arizona
Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe, Arizona
Ft. McDowell Yavapai Nation, Arizona
Cocopah Indian Tribe, Arizona
Hopi Tribe, Arizona
Tohono O'odham Nation, Arizona
Navajo Nation Council, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah
Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission
Dine (Navajo) Medicine Men's Association
Ft. Mojave Indian Tribe, Arizona, California, and Nevada
Alabama
Poarch Band of Creek Indians, Alabama
Alaska
Sealaska Heritage Institute, Alaska
California
Susanville Indian Rancheria, California
Ramona Band of Cahuilla, California
Kashia Band of Pomo Indians, California
Karuk Tribe, California
Colorado
Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Colorado
Idaho Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Idaho
Michigan
Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, Michigan
Nevada
Duckwater Shoshone Tribe, Nevada
Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, Nevada
Wells Band Council, Te-Moak Tribe, Nevada
New Mexico
Mescalero Apache Tribe, New Mexico
Jicarilla Apache Nation, New Mexico
Pueblo of Tesuque, New Mexico
Pueblo of Picuris, New Mexico
Pueblo of Santo Domingo, New Mexico
Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico
Pueblo of Zuni, New Mexico and Arizona
Washington
Confederated Tribes and Band of the Yakama Nation,
Washington
Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Washington
Puyallup Tribe of Indians, Washington
Skokomish Indian Tribe, Washington
Muckleshoot Tribe, Washington
Hoh Indian Nation, Washington
Wyoming
Shoshone & Arapaho Tribes, Wyoming
Ms. McCOLLUM. Unfortunately, the amendment to strike this provision
from the bill offered by the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), who is
the cochair of the Native American Caucus along with me--a bipartisan
amendment--was totally rejected by the Rules Committee; so, Mr.
Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this rule.
The National Defense Authorization Act should not be used as a
vehicle to undermine our commitment to protecting religious liberties
for tribal nations where so many of those men and women have proudly
fought to serve their country, the United States of America.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I think Mr. Cole really addressed the issue.
In regards as to how it went down in the Rules Committee, he clearly
addressed the issue on this floor in regards to his support of the
rule, even though he didn't get everything that he wanted.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
California (Ms. Lee).
Ms. LEE of California. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for
yielding and for his leadership and for really trying at least to allow
many of us with different points of view to have some input into this
rule and this bill. Unfortunately, that did not happen at the Rules
Committee, so of course, I rise in strong opposition to this rule to
provide consideration for the National Defense Authorization Act.
While I certainly support several elements of this bill, I have grave
concerns about the more than $63 billion in funding for the overseas
contingency
[[Page H8376]]
operations fund. The OCO account remains a slush fund that allows the
Pentagon to circumvent the Budget Control Act, and we still haven't
received an audit from the Pentagon.
Every agency has to go through an audit process. What happened at the
Pentagon--we still have not received the audit for a lot of reasons
that they state, but in a bipartisan way, many of us are urging the
Defense Department to come up and show us the numbers, show us what
their audit will provide, so the American people know what their
taxpayer dollars are paying for.
I also have grave concerns about authorizing any funding for the
current war in Iraq and Syria--and, yes, that is a war that is taking
place. Congress has not yet debated or authorized this new war. We see
more and more troops being sent to the region; and, of course,
unintended consequences could put these troops in harm's way and lead
to combat operations. I don't believe the American people want to see
our brave young men and women in that role.
That is why many of us have called and will call on Congress to live
up to its constitutional responsibility and have a full debate on any
authorization for any use of military force. We are in a war, Mr.
Speaker, and each and every day we see more and more danger. We see
more and more warfare take place. Enough is enough.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
Mr. McGOVERN. I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman.
Ms. LEE of California. Mr. Speaker, committing the United States to
yet another long-term war in the Middle East, it should never be an
afterthought. What we continue to do is authorize, in a variety of
bills, the continuation of a war that has not been authorized nor
declared.
I know that the American people worry about the world and what is
taking place. They know how dangerous the world is. We know that also,
and we know that the Pentagon deserves a budget and authorizations that
ensure our national security, but we also know that we have a
constitutional responsibility to debate the use of force, and in fact,
if we believe that that is the course of action that our country should
take, then let's have an up-or-down vote.
This really should be the moment that we are debating that because,
once we leave here, come January, we don't know what will happen. We
don't know how far this war will have expanded, and it will continue to
be an unauthorized war.
Congress and the American people deserve to understand the costs and
consequences to our national security and to our domestic priorities in
fighting this war.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my
time.
Mr. McGOVERN. May I inquire how many additional speakers the
gentleman has?
Mr. NUGENT. I have none.
Mr. McGOVERN. We have a couple, but they are not here yet. I yield
myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am sad to say that this Congress is kind of ending the
way it began, under a very closed and restrictive process. As I said
earlier, this is the most-closed Congress in the history of the United
States of America.
Routinely important issues, issues that impact not just the American
people, but that impact the entire world, are denied a debate on the
House floor. We are bringing up multiple bills here today all under a
very closed process; yet there are some very important issues that need
to be debated and to be discussed and to be voted on.
I have crumbling bridges and sewer and water systems in my district
that need repair, and I can't get a penny to repair or replace them. We
are told that we don't have any money, but we seem to have billions and
billions of dollars to throw at these endless wars in Afghanistan and
the Middle East.
Mr. Speaker, I enter into the Record the November 2 New York Times
editorial, ``The New War's Rising Cost.''
[From the New York Times, Nov. 2, 2014]
The New War's Rising Cost
(By the Editorial Board)
The Pentagon disclosed last week that America's ever-
shifting new war in the Middle East has cost taxpayers more
than half a billion dollars since it began in August. Yet
Congress has not bothered to hold a vote to authorize the
Obama administration's decision to get into another war.
As the price tag of the military campaign in Iraq and Syria
rises, it might seem reasonable to expect that Congress would
have to consider the state of the effort and appropriate
funding for it. Thanks to the dysfunctional politics of
defense budgeting, it turns out Congress won't have to--at
least not anytime soon.
As of Oct. 16, the air campaign against the Islamic State,
also known as ISIS, had cost $580 million, according to the
Pentagon. The military is paying for the bombing sorties
using the Overseas Contingency Operations budget, a flexible
fund established for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With
the Afghan war drawing to a close this year, the Obama
administration had sought to cut that fund from the nearly
$85 billion appropriated for 2014 to $59 billion for 2015.
But because lawmakers were not able to pass a budget in time,
the fund will continue at last year's level under a
continuing resolution that ends in December and is likely to
be extended until the spring.
Authorizing a new defense budget would force lawmakers to
take stock of the military action that was initially billed
as a limited defensive measure before the White House said
that it was likely to last for years. It would also serve as
an opportunity to revisit the dubious legal authority the
White House is relying on.
American officials continue to be alarmingly vague about a
central unanswered question about the military campaign
against the Islamic State: whether it formally or implicitly
represents a shift in American policy toward the government
of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Washington has called
for Mr. Assad's ouster and has provided limited support to
rebel factions fighting the state. But the United States must
clarify what its goals are concerning Mr. Assad, some senior
administration officials believe, including Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel, as Mark Landler of The Times reported recently.
The Pentagon says the bombing campaign has dealt the
Islamic State setbacks in the battlefield. But the group
remains strong and continues to make inroads in key parts of
Syria and Iraq. Military officials have said curiously little
in recent weeks about Khorasan, a militant group they
described during the early stages of the airstrikes in Syria
as posing an imminent threat to the United States. The vague
and at times contradictory information the government has
provided about that group, and the broader strategy, shows a
distressing level of improvisation.
The past few weeks have also presented reminders of the
risks of the military mission. Officials at the Pentagon are
worried about reports that Islamic State fighters have
acquired shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, which could
be used to bring down American aircraft. Those fighters
recently took credit for shooting down an Iraqi military
helicopter; the group posted online a manual instructing
fighters how to use one of the missiles to bring down Apache
helicopters, one of the attack aircraft the Pentagon has been
using.
Congress has a responsibility to take a hard look at the
long-term goal of the military mission and its projected
cost. It has skirted that duty for too long.
____
[From Reuters.com, Nov. 23, 2014]
Obama Widens Post-2014 Combat Role for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan
(By Steve Holland and Mirwais Harooni)
President Barack Obama has approved plans to give U.S.
military commanders a wider role to fight the Taliban
alongside Afghan forces after the current mission ends next
month, a senior administration official said.
The decision made in recent weeks extends previous plans by
authorizing U.S. troops to carry out combat operations
against the Taliban to protect Americans and support
Afghanistan's security forces as part of the new ISAF
Resolute Support mission next year.
Obama had announced in May that U.S. troop levels would be
cut to 9,800 by the end of the year, by half again in 2015
and to a normal embassy presence with a security assistance
office in Kabul by the end of 2016.
Under that plan, only a small contingent of 1,800 U.S.
troops was limited to counter terrorism operations against
remnants of al Qaeda. The new orders will also allow
operations against the Taliban.
``To the extent that Taliban members directly threaten the
United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan or provide
direct support to al Qaeda, we will take appropriate measures
to keep Americans safe,'' the official said.
A report by the New York Times late on Friday said the new
authorization also allows the deployment of American jets,
bombers and drones.
The announcement was welcomed by Afghan police and army
commanders after heavy losses against the Taliban this
summer.
``This is the decision that we needed to hear . . . We
could lose battles against the Taliban without direct support
from American forces,'' said Khalil Andarabi, police chief
for Wardak province, about an hour's drive from the capital
and partly controlled by the Taliban.
Afghan government forces remain in control of all 34
provincial capitals but are suffering a high rate of
casualties, recently described as unsustainable by a U.S.
commander in Afghanistan.
[[Page H8377]]
More than 4,600 Afghan force members have been killed since
the start of the year, 6.5 percent more than a year ago.
Despite being funded with more than $4 billion in aid this
year, police and soldiers frequently complain they lack the
resources to fight the Taliban on their own.
``Right now we don't have heavy weapons, artillery and air
support. If Americans launch their own operations and help
us, too, then we will be able to tackle Taliban,'' said
senior police detective Asadullah Insafi in eastern Ghazni
province.
The Taliban said it is undeterred by the U.S. announcement.
``They will continue their killings, night raids and
dishonor to the people of Afghanistan in 2015. It will only
make us continue our jihad,'' Taliban spokesman Zabihullah
Mujajhid said.
Mr. McGOVERN. We seem to have money for these other things. We heard
earlier today about the fact that there are 50,000 ghost soldiers in
Iraq that we are funding with our taxpayer dollars; they don't exist.
Somebody is stealing that money, and where is the outrage in this
Congress? Where is the outrage?
Mr. Speaker, these wars deserve a debate. They deserve our oversight.
We are supposed to be a deliberative body. We should be talking about
these things, and we are getting more deeply involved in another war in
Iraq and in Syria. We have 3,000 troops in Iraq right now. God knows
how many are going to be there when we come back in January.
By the way, there is nothing in this bill that prevents the President
from adjusting the mission of those troops, so that they are engaged in
direct on-the-ground combat. It is something that we ought to be
concerned about; yet we are not. We are leaving town without even
talking about this stuff.
You don't need an NDAA bill to be able to debate and vote on an
authorization. All we need is a Republican leadership with the backbone
to bring it to the floor. This is our responsibility. This is our job.
This is our constitutional responsibility; yet we are not doing
anything.
Mr. Speaker, I would also like to enter into the Record an article by
FOX News political analyst Juan Williams entitled, ``Congress ducks its
duty on ISIS vote.''
[From TheHill.com, Oct. 6, 2014]
Juan Williams: Congress Ducks Its Duty on ISIS Vote
(By Juan Williams)
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said recently he would not
even ask his colleagues to vote on an authorization to use
military force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS) until next year, when the new Congress is seated.
Boehner told the New York Times, ``Doing this with a whole
group of members who are on their way out the door, I don't
think that is the right way to handle this.''
Then last week he changed his position, telling ABC News he
is willing to call the House into session to debate the U.S.
military action to destroy the terrorists. But the Speaker
said it is up to President Obama to request a Congressional
vote authorizing military action.
Meanwhile, the Speaker said it was wrong of President Obama
to try to beat the terrorists without putting American
military combat ``boots on the ground'' to win the current
fight.
Huh? That makes no sense. When did House Republicans start
taking orders from President Obama?
The hard fact is the GOP House is responsible for its own
failure to act on the central question of authorizing the
U.S. military to put combat boots on the ground.
``Since when do we sit around waiting, using the excuse `He
didn't ask'?'' House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
asked reporters last week. ``No, if you want to have an
authorization that has any constraints on the president, you
don't wait for him to write it.''
Instead, some Republican House members are busy campaigning
for reelection by appealing to voters' fears about the ISIS
threat.
Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Colorado Republican, told his
constituents that his fellow House Republicans are sharing
political complaints about the president with commanders in
charge of the military.
``A lot of us are talking to the generals behind the
scenes, saying, `Hey, if you disagree with the policy that
the White House has given you, let's have a resignation,' ''
Rep. Lamborn said. He added that any Generals who resigned in
protest would ``go out in a blaze of glory.''
That is an overt effort to undermine civilian control of
the U.S. military, which is required by the Constitution. It
is outrageous. It is a purely partisan effort to win votes by
playing to extremist hatred of the president.
These right-wing attacks are coming from some of the same
people who condemned anyone in disagreement with any part of
the Bush administration's foreign policy as ``soft on
terrorism,'' ``unpatriotic'' or worse.
Is it any wonder that Congress now has an 80 percent
disapproval rating and a 12.6 approval rating, according to
the latest Real Clear Politics average?
Is it any wonder that, according to a recent ABC News/
Washington Post poll, 51 percent of Americans would not vote
to reelect their own representative, the highest figure
recorded on that question in the 25-year history of the poll?
Article I of the Constitution gives Congress, not the
president, the power to declare war. However, Congress has
not made a formal declaration of war since World War II.
Since then, Authorizations for Use of Military Force or
``AUMFs'' have become politically expedient substitutes.
Now, the current Congress is too cowardly to even vote on
that kind of nominal approval. Some say the 2001 and 2002
AUMFs that gave President Bush the authority to use the
military against the perpetrators of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein,
respectively, are still in effect.
As my friend and Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge
Andrew Napolitano has noted, this is ridiculous because ISIS
did not exist in 2001 and 2002, so Congress could not have
intended the AUMFs to apply to the group by any stretch of
the imagination.
Last week, one major Western democracy did call its
legislature back from a weeks-long recess to vote on the
critical, time-sensitive issue of military strikes against
ISIS.
That legislative body was Britain's Parliament--not the
U.S. Congress.
Congress is not absolved of responsibility just because we
are in the middle of a political campaign season--especially
when its members are telling us that ISIS is on the march
and, in the words of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), ``we need
to stop them before we all get killed here at home.''
Members have a job to do right now and they are not doing
it.
There are increasing signs that many Republican members in
Speaker Boehner's own caucus can no longer stomach this
hypocrisy and abdication of Congress' duty.
``The president should have come to Congress and still
should come to Congress for authorization,'' Rep. Ileana Ros-
Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who used to chair the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, told BuzzFeed.
``Everybody can come back at a moment's notice. Everyone is
in the districts . . . We can all go back [to D.C. for a
vote] and I hope we do,'' she added.
``If you can't make the argument for or against an AUMF,
and actually justify your vote for or against an AUMF, you
have absolutely no business being in Congress,'' Rep. Raul
Labrador, an Idaho Republican and Tea Party favorite, told
the Washington Post.
``This is why we come to Congress . . . It's shameful if
anyone here in Congress decides that they would rather leave
it up to the president by himself to determine if we should
actually be doing something in that region of the world.''
Labrador said.
Principled Republicans like Ros-Lehtinen and Labrador are
in the minority within their party.
Their ranks may be growing, but they are still a minority.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I also want to talk a little bit about the
immigration bill. As I said before, the President didn't create this
problem. Quite frankly, the House Republican leadership created this
problem. We had the Senate that acted in a good faith bipartisan manner
and passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill. That was a year and
a half ago.
In a year and a half, this House of Representatives has done nothing
except come to the floor and demagogue the immigration issue. The
debate on the other side of the aisle, quite frankly, has gotten so
ugly that it is, I think, beneath the level of dignity of this House of
Representatives.
We should expect better in terms of the debate on the issue of
immigration. I enter into the Record the November 20 editorial from The
New York Times, which concludes by saying:
The right will falsely label Mr. Obama's actions lawless.
They are a victory for problem-solving over posturing, common
sense over cruelty, and lawful order over a chaotic status
quo.
[From the New York Times, Nov. 20, 2014]
At Long Last, Immigration Action
(By the Editorial Board)
President Obama says he will speak to the nation on
Thursday night about making major changes to immigration
policy, including shielding several million unauthorized
immigrants from deportation. He intends to do this under
executive authority, because he has given up waiting for
Congress to act.
The result will not be ideal, but no broad executive action
on immigration was ever going to be. Only Congress can create
an immigration system that rescues workers and families from
unjust laws and creates legal pathways to citizenship. The
best Mr. Obama can offer is a reprieve to people trapped by
Congress's failures--temporary permission to live and work
without fear.
But respite for as many as four million to five million
people, according to some estimates, should be cause for
relief and celebration. The reasons given by Mr. Obama and
[[Page H8378]]
his aides are sound and well within the law. The executive
branch has limited means to deport all 11 million people
living here without authorization. It should focus on
expelling serious and violent criminals, and not waste money
and effort on breaking up families, and deporting those who
contribute to society and whose ties to this country are deep
and permanent.
Details have not been announced, but it seems that Mr.
Obama's plan will protect the parents of citizens and legal
permanent residents, and a larger portion of the young people
called Dreamers, who came here when they were children.
Other, smaller groups may qualify as well.
Mr. Obama should draw the circle of inclusion as large as
possible--up to the eight million or so who might have
qualified under an ambitious bipartisan bill that passed the
Senate last year. But Mr. Obama, who wants to bolster his
actions against legal attack, seems unlikely to include
parents whose children lack citizenship or green cards. Tens
of thousands of families will surely be disheartened by this
exclusion and other politically motivated shortcomings--the
plan is expected to bar recipients from health coverage under
the Affordable Care Act, for example. Some immigrant advocacy
groups have already denounced the plan as too cautious and
too small.
The backlash on the right, too, is well underway, with
Republican lawmakers condemning what they see as a tyrannical
usurpation of congressional authority by ``Emperor'' Obama.
They fail to mention, though, that new priorities will put
the vast deportation machinery to better use against serious
criminals, terrorists and security threats, which should be
the goal of any sane law-enforcement regime. Nor did they
ever complain when Mr. Obama aggressively used his executive
authority to ramp up deportations to an unprecedented peak of
400,000 a year.
It has been the immigration system's retreat from sanity,
of course, that made Mr. Obama's new plan necessary. Years
were wasted, and countless families broken, while Mr. Obama
clung to a futile strategy of luring Republicans toward a
legislative deal. He has been his own worst enemy--over the
years he stressed his executive impotence, telling advocates
that he could not change the system on his own. This may have
suited his legislative strategy, but it was not true.
It's good that Mr. Obama has finally turned the page. He
plans to lead a rally in Las Vegas on Friday at a high school
where he outlined his immigration agenda in January 2013.
Legislative solutions are a dim hope for some future day when
the Republican fever breaks. But until then, here we are.
This initiative cannot be allowed to fail for lack of
support from those who accept the need for progress on
immigration, however incremental. Courageous immigrant
advocates, led by day laborers, Dreamers and others, have
pressed a reluctant president to acknowledge the urgency of
their cause--and to do something about it. The only proper
motion now is forward.
The right will falsely label Mr. Obama's actions lawless.
They are a victory for problem-solving over posturing, common
sense over cruelty, and lawful order over a chaotic status
quo.
Mr. McGOVERN. I also enter into the Record a November 25 letter from
130 legal scholars on why President Obama's action is lawful and has
historical precedent.
25 November 2014.
We write as scholars and teachers of immigration law who
have reviewed the executive actions announced by the
President on November 20, 2014. It is our considered view
that the expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA) and establishment of the Deferred Action for
Parental Accountability (DAPA) programs are within the legal
authority of the executive branch of the government of the
United States. To explain, we cite federal statutes,
regulations, and historical precedents. We do not express any
views on the policy aspects of these two executive actions.
This letter updates a letter transmitted by 136 law
professors to the White House on September 3, 2014, on the
role of executive action in immigration law.\1\ We focus on
the legal basis for granting certain noncitizens in the
United States ``deferred action'' status as a temporary
reprieve from deportation. One of these programs, Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), was established by
executive action in June 2012. On November 20, the President
announced the expansion of eligibility criteria for DACA and
the creation of a new program, Deferred Action for Parental
Accountability (DAPA).
Prosecutorial discretion in immigration law enforcement
Both November 20 executive actions relating to deferred
action are exercises of prosecutorial discretion.
Prosecutorial discretion refers to the authority of the
Department of Homeland Security to decide how the immigration
laws should be applied.\2\ Prosecutorial discretion is a
long-accepted legal practice in practically every law
enforcement context,\3\ unavoidable whenever the appropriated
resources do not permit 100 percent enforcement. In
immigration enforcement, prosecutorial discretion covers both
agency decisions to refrain from acting on enforcement, like
cancelling or not serving or filing a charging document or
Notice to Appear with the immigration court, as well as
decisions to provide a discretionary remedy like granting a
stay of removal,\4\ parole,\5\ or deferred action.\6\
Prosecutorial discretion provides a temporary reprieve from
deportation. Some forms of prosecutorial discretion, like
deferred action, confer ``lawful presence'' and the ability
to apply for work authorization.\7\ However, the benefits of
the deferred action programs announced on November 20 are not
unlimited. The DACA and DAPA programs, like any other
exercise of prosecutorial discretion do not provide an
independent means to obtain permanent residence in the United
States, nor do they allow a noncitizen to acquire eligibility
to apply for naturalization as a U.S. citizen. As the
President has emphasized, only Congress can prescribe the
qualifications for permanent resident status or citizenship.
Statutory authority and long-standing agency practice
Focusing first on statutes enacted by Congress, Sec. 103(a)
of the Immigration and Nationality Act (``INA'' or the
``Act''), clearly empowers the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) to make choices about immigration enforcement.
That section provides: ``The Secretary of Homeland Security
shall be charged with the administration and enforcement of
this Act and all other laws relating to the immigration and
naturalization of aliens . . . .'' \8\ INA Sec. 242(g)
recognizes the executive branch's legal authority to exercise
prosecutorial discretion, specifically by barring judicial
review of three particular types of prosecutorial discretion
decisions: to commence removal proceedings, to adjudicate
cases, and to execute removal orders.\9\ In other sections of
the Act, Congress has explicitly recognized deferred action
by name, as a tool that the executive branch may use, in the
exercise of its prosecutorial discretion, to protect certain
victims of abuse, crime or trafficking.\10\ Another statutory
provision, INA Sec. 274A(h)(3), recognizes executive branch
authority to authorize employment for noncitizens who do not
otherwise receive it automatically by virtue of their
particular immigration status. This provision (and the formal
regulations noted below) confer the work authorization
eligibility that is part of both the DACA and DAPA programs.
Based on this statutory foundation, the application of
prosecutorial discretion to individuals or groups has been
part of the immigration system for many years. Longstanding
provisions of the formal regulations promulgated under the
Act (which have the force of law) reflect the prominence of
prosecutorial discretion in immigration law. Deferred action
is expressly defined in one regulation as ``an act of
administrative convenience to the government which gives some
cases lower priority'' and goes on to authorize work permits
for those who receive deferred action.\11\ Agency memoranda
further reaffirm the role of prosecutorial discretion in
immigration law. In 1976, President Ford's Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) General Counsel Sam Bernsen
stated in a legal opinion, ``The reasons for the exercise of
prosecutorial discretion are both practical and humanitarian.
There simply are not enough resources to enforce all of the
rules and regulations presently on the books.''\12\ In 2000,
a memorandum on prosecutorial discretion in immigration
matters issued by INS Commissioner Doris Meissner provided
that ``[s]ervice officers are not only authorized by law but
expected to exercise discretion in a judicious manner at all
stages of the enforcement process,'' and spelled out the
factors that should guide those decisions.\13\ In 2011,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of
Homeland Security published guidance known as the ``Morton
Memo,'' outlining more than one dozen factors, including
humanitarian factors, for employees to consider in deciding
whether prosecutorial discretion should be exercised. These
factors--now updated by the November 20 executive actions--
include tender or elderly age, long-time lawful permanent
residence, and serious health conditions.
Judicial recognition of executive branch prosecutorial discretion in
immigration cases
Federal courts have also explicitly recognized
prosecutorial discretion in general and deferred action in
particular.\15\ Notably, the U.S. Supreme Court noted in its
Arizona v. United States decision in 2012: ``A principal
feature of the removal system is the broad discretion
exercised by immigration officials. . . . Federal officials,
as an initial matter, must decide whether it makes sense to
pursue removal at all . . . .''\16\ In its 1999 decision in
Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the
Supreme Court explicitly recognized deferred action by name.
This affirmation of the role of discretion is consistent with
congressional appropriations for immigration enforcement,
which are at an annual level that would allow for the arrest,
detention, and deportation of fewer than 4 percent of the
noncitizens in the United States who lack lawful immigration
status.\17\
Based on statutory authority, U.S. immigration agencies
have a long history of exercising prosecutorial discretion
for a range of reasons that include economic or humanitarian
considerations, especially--albeit not only--when the
noncitizens involved have strong family ties or long-term
residence in the United States.\18\ Prosecutorial discretion,
including deferred action, has been made available on both a
case-by-case basis and a group basis, as are true under DACA
and DAPA. But even when a program like deferred action has
been aimed at a particular
[[Page H8379]]
group of people, individuals must apply, and the agency must
exercise its discretion based on the facts of each individual
case. Both DACA and DAPA explicitly incorporate that
requirement.
Historical precedents for deferred action and similar programs for
individuals and groups
As examples of the exercise of prosecutorial discretion,
numerous administrations have issued directives providing
deferred action or functionally similar forms of
prosecutorial discretion to groups of noncitizens, often to
large groups. The administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan
and George H.W. Bush deferred the deportations of a then-
predicted (though ultimately much lower) 1.5 million
noncitizen spouses and children of immigrants who qualified
for legalization under the Immigration Reform and Control Act
(IRCA) of 1986, authorizing work permits for the spouses.\19\
Presidents Reagan and Bush took these actions, even though
Congress had decided to exclude them from IRCA.\20\ Among the
many other examples of significant deferred action or similar
programs are two during the George W. Bush administration: a
deferred action program in 2005 for foreign academic students
affected by Hurricane Katrina,\21\ and ``Deferred Enforcement
Departure'' for certain Liberians in 2007.\22\ Several
decades earlier, the Reagan administration issued a form of
prosecutorial discretion called ``Extended Voluntary
Departure'' in 1981 to thousands of Polish nationals.\23\ The
legal sources and historical examples of immigration
prosecutorial discretion described above are by no means
exhaustive, but they underscore the legal authority for an
administration to apply prosecutorial discretion to both
individuals and groups.
Some have suggested that the size of the group who may
``benefit'' from an act of prosecutorial discretion is
relevant to its legality. We are unaware of any legal
authority for such an assumption. Notably, the Reagan-Bush
programs of the late 1980s and early 1990s were based on an
initial estimated percentage of the unauthorized population
(about 40 percent) that is comparable to the initial
estimated percentage for the November 20 executive actions.
The President could conceivably decide to cap the number of
people who can receive prosecutorial discretion or make the
conditions restrictive enough to keep the numbers small, but
this would be a policy choice, not a legal issue.\24\ For all
of these reasons, the President is not ``re-writing'' the
immigration laws, as some of his critics have suggested. He
is doing precisely the opposite--exercising a discretion
conferred by the immigration laws and settled general
principles of enforcement discretion.
The Constitution and immigration enforcement discretion
Critics have also suggested that the deferred action
programs announced on November 20 violate the President's
constitutional duty to ``take Care that the Laws be
faithfully executed.''\25\ A serious legal question would
therefore arise if the executive branch were to halt all
immigration enforcement, or even if the Administration were
to refuse to substantially spend the resources appropriated
by Congress. In either of those scenarios, the justification
based on resource limitations would not apply. But the Obama
administration has fully utilized all the enforcement
resources Congress has appropriated. It has enforced the
immigration law at record levels through apprehensions,
investigations, and detentions that have resulted in over two
million removals.\26\ At the same time that the President
announced the November 20 executive actions that we discuss
here, he also announced revised enforcement priorities to
focus on removing the most serious criminal offenders and
further shoring up the southern border. Nothing in the
President's actions will prevent him from continuing to
remove as many violators as the resources Congress has given
him permit.
Moreover, when prosecutorial discretion is exercised,
particularly when the numbers are large, there is no legal
barrier to formalizing that policy decision through sound
procedures that include a formal application and
dissemination of the relevant criteria to the officers
charged with implementing the program and to the public. As
DACA has shown, those kinds of procedures assure that
important policy decisions are made at the leadership level,
help officers to implement policy decisions fairly and
consistently, and offer the public the transparency that
government priority decisions require in a democracy.\27\
conclusion
Our conclusion is that the expansion of the DACA program
and the establishment of Deferred Action for Parental
Accountability are legal exercises of prosecutorial
discretion. Both executive actions are well within the legal
authority of the executive branch of the government of the
United States.
Hiroshi Motomura, Susan Westerberg Prager Professor of Law,
University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law*; Shoba
Sivaprasad Wadhia, Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar and Clinical
Professor of Law, Pennsylvania State University, Dickinson
School of Law*; Stephen H. Legomsky, The John S. Lehmann
University Professor, Washington University School of Law*.
David Abraham, Professor of Law, University of Miami School
of Law*; Raquel Aldana, Associate Dean for Faculty
Scholarship, Professor of Law, University of the Pacific,
McGeorge School of Law; Farrin R. Anello, Visiting Assistant
Clinical Professor, Seton Hall University School of Law;
Deborah Anker, Clinical Professor of Law, Director, Harvard
Immigration and Refugee Clinic, Harvard Law School.
Sabrineh Ardalan, Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School,
Assistant Director, Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical
Program; David C. Baluarte, Assistant Clinical Professor of
Law, Director, Immigrant Rights Clinic, Washington and Lee
University School of Law; Melynda Barnhart, Professor of Law,
New York Law School; Jon Bauer, Clinical Professor of Law and
Richard D. Tulisano '69 Scholar in Human Rights, Director,
Asylum and Human Rights Clinic, University of Connecticut
School of Law.
Lenni B. Benson, Professor of Law, Director, Safe Passage
Project, New York Law School; Jacqueline Bhabha, Professor of
the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of
Public Health, Lecturer in Law, Harvard Law School; Linda
Bosniak, Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University School
of Law-Camden; Richard A. Boswell, Professor of Law &
Associate Dean for Global Programs, U.C. Hastings College of
the Law; Jason A. Cade, Assistant Professor of Law,
University of Georgia Law School; Janet Calvo, Professor of
Law, CUNY School of Law, New York.
Kristina M. Campbell, Associate Professor of Law, Director,
Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, University of the
District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law;
Stacy Caplow, Professor of Law and Associate Dean of
Professional Legal Education, Brooklyn Law School; Benjamin
Casper, Visiting Associate Clinical Professor, University of
Minnesota Law School; Linus Chan, Visiting Associate
Professor of Clinical Law, University of Minnesota; Howard F.
Chang, Earle Hepburn Professor of Law, University of
Pennsylvania Law School; Michael J. Churgin, Raybourne
Thompson Centennial Professor in Law, University of Texas at
Austin.
Marisa Cianciarulo, Professor of Law, Director, Bette &
Wylie Aitken Family Violence Clinic, Chapman University Dale
E. Fowler School of Law; Evelyn Cruz, Clinical Professor of
Law, Director, Immigration Law & Policy Clinic, Arizona State
University, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law; Ingrid Eagly,
Assistant Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law; Philip
Eichorn, Adjunct Professor--Immigration Law, Cleveland
State--Cleveland Marshall School of Law; Bram T. Elias,
Clinical Visiting Associate Professor, University of Iowa
College of Law; Stella Burch Elias, Associate Professor of
Law, University of Iowa College of Law.
Jill E. Family, Professor of Law, Director, Law &
Government Institute, Widener University School of Law; Niels
Frenzen, Clinical, Professor of Law, Gould School of Law,
University of Southern California; Maryellen Fullerton,
Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School; Cesar Cuauhtemoc
Garcia Hernandez, Visiting Professor, University of Denver
Sturm College of Law; Lauren Gilbert, Professor of Law, St.
Thomas University School of Law; Denise L. Gilman, Clinical
Professor, Co-Director, Immigration Clinic, University of
Texas School of Law
John F. Gossart, Jr., Adjunct Professor of Law, University
of Baltimore School of Law, University of Maryland School of
Law, United States Immigration Judge 1982-2013, retired; P.
Gulasekaram, Associate Professor of Law, Santa Clara
University; Anju Gupta, Associate Professor of Law, Director,
Immigrant Rights Clinic, Rutgers School of Law--Newark; Susan
R. Gzesh, Senior Lecturer & Executive Director, Pozen Family
Center for Human Rights, University of Chicago; Jonathan
Hafetz, Associate Professor of Law, Seton Hall University;
Dina Francesca Haynes, Professor of Law and Director of Human
Rights and Immigration Law Project, New England Law, Boston.
Susan Hazeldean, Associate Clinical Professor, Cornell Law
School; Ernesto Hernandez-Lopez, Professor of Law, Fowler
School of Law, Chapman University; Laura A. Hernandez,
Professor, Baylor Law School; Michael Heyman, Professor of
Law, John Marshall Law School; Barbara Hines, Clinical
Professor of Law, Co-Director, Immigration Clinic, University
of Texas School of Law; Laila L. Hlass, Clinical Associate
Professor, Boston University School of Law; Geoffrey Hoffman,
Clinical Assoc. Professor, Director, Immigration Clinic,
University of Houston Law Center.
Mary Holper, Associate Clinical Professor, Boston College
Law School; Alan Hyde, Distinguished Professor and Sidney
Reitman Scholar, Rutgers University School of Law--Newark;
Kate Jastram, Lecturer in Residence, Executive Director, The
Honorable G. William & Ariadna Miller Institute for Global
Challenges and the Law, University of California, Berkeley,
School of Law; Kit Johnson, Associate Professor of Law,
University of Oklahoma College of Law; Anil Kalhan, Associate
Professor of Law, Drexel University Kline School of Law;
Daniel Kanstroom, Professor of Law, Dean's Research Scholar,
and Director, International Human Rights Program, Boston
College Law School.
Elizabeth Keyes, Assistant Professor, University of
Baltimore School of Law; Kathleen Kim, Professor of Law,
Loyola Law School Los Angeles; David C. Koelsch; Associate
Professor, Immigration Law Clinic, University of Detroit
Mercy School of Law; Jennifer Lee Koh, Associate Professor of
Law and Director, Immigration Clinic, Western State College
of Law; Kevin Lapp, Associate Professor of Law, Loyola Law
School,
[[Page H8380]]
Los Angeles; Christopher Lasch, Associate Professor of Law,
University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
Jennifer J. Lee, Clinical Assistant Professor, Legal
Director, Sheller Center for Social Justice, Temple
University Beasley School of Law; Stephen Lee, Professor of
Law, University of California, Irvine; Christine Lin,
Clinical Instructor/Staff Attorney, Center for Gender &
Refugee Studies, Refugee & Human Rights Clinic, University of
California, Hastings College of the Law; Beth Lyon, Professor
of Law, Director, Farmworker Legal Aid Clinic, Co-Director,
Community Interpreter Internship Program, Acting Director of
Clinical Programs, Villanova University School of Law;
Stephen Manning, Adjunct Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark
College.
Lynn Marcus, Professor of the Practice, Co-Director,
Immigration Law Clinic, University of Arizona James E. Rogers
College of Law; Miriam H. Marton, Director, Tulsa Immigrant
Resource Network, Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of
Law, University of Tulsa College of Law; Elizabeth McCormick,
Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Director, Immigrant
Rights Project, Director, Clinical Education Programs,
University of Tulsa College of Law; M. Isabel Medina, Ferris
Family Distinguished Professor of Law, Loyola University New
Orleans College of Law; Stephen Meili, Vaughan G. Papke
Clinical Professor in Law, University of Minnesota Law
School; Vanessa Merton, Professor of Law, Pace University
School of Law.
Andrew Moore, Associate Professor of Law, University of
Detroit Mercy School of Law; Jennifer Moore, Professor of
Law, Weihofen Professorship, University of New Mexico School
of Law; Daniel I. Morales, Assistant Professor of Law, DePaul
University College of Law; Nancy Morawetz, Professor of
Clinical Law, Co-Director, Immigrant Rights Clinic, NYU
School of Law; Karen Musalo, Bank of America Foundation Chair
in International Law, Professor & Director, Center for Gender
& Refugee Studies, U.C. Hastings College of the Law;
Alizabeth Newman, Clinic Law Professor, Immigrant &
NonCitizens Rights Clinic, CUNY School of Law.
Noah Novogrodsky, Professor of Law, University of Wyoming
College of Law; Fernando A. Nunez, Visiting Assistant
Professor of Law, Charlotte School of Law; Mariela Olivares,
Associate Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law;
Michael A. Olivas, William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in
Law and Director, Institute for Higher Education Law and
Governance, University of Houston Law Center; Patrick D.
O'Neill, Esq., Adjunct Professor of Immigration Law,
University of Puerto Rico School of Law; Sarah Paoletti,
Practice Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law
School.
Sunita Patel, Practitioner-in-Residence, Civil Advocacy
Clinic, American University, Washington College of Law; Huyen
Pham, Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development,
Professor of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law; Michele
R. Pistone, Professor of Law, Villanova University School of
Law, Luis F.B. Plascencia, Assistant Professor, School of
Social and Behavioral Sciences, Arizona State University;
Polly J. Price, Professor of Law, Emory University School of
Law; Doris Marie Provine, Professor Emerita, Justice & Social
Inquiry, School of Social Transformation, Arizona State
University.
Nina Rabin, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Director,
Bacon Immigration Law and Policy Program, James E. Rogers
College of Law, University of Arizona; Jaya Ramji-Nogales,
Professor of Law, Co-Director, Institute for International
Law and Public Policy, Temple University, Beasley School of
Law; Renee C. Redman, Adjunct Professor of Law, University of
Connecticut School of Law; Ediberto Roman, Professor of Law &
Director of Citizenship and Immigration Initiatives, Florida
International University; Victor C. Romero, Maureen B.
Cavanaugh Distinguished Faculty Scholar & Professor of Law,
Penn State Law; Joseph H. Rosen, Adjunct Professor, Atlanta's
John Marshall Law School; Carrie Rosenbaum, Professor of
Immigration Law, Golden Gate University School of Law.
Rachel E. Rosenbloom, Associate Professor, Northeastern
University School of Law; Ruben G. Rumbaut, Professor of
Sociology, Criminology, Law and Society, University of
California, Irvine; Ted Ruthizer, Lecturer in Law, Columbia
Law School; Leticia M. Saucedo, Professor of Law and Director
of Clinical Legal Education, UC Davis School of Law; Heather
Scavone, Assistant Professor of Law, Director of the
Humanitarian Immigration Law Clinic, Elon University School
of Law; Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Professor from Practice,
Georgetown Law.
Philip Schrag, Delaney Family Professor of Public Interest
Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Bijal Shah, Acting
Assistant Professor, NYU School of Law; Ragini Shah, Clinical
Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School; Careen
Shannon, Adjunct Professor of Law and Director, Immigration
Law Field Clinic, Yeshiva University, Benjamin N. Cardozo
School of Law; Anna Williams Shavers, Cline Williams
Professor of Citizenship Law, University of Nebraska College
of Law; Bryn Siegel, Professor, Immigration Law, Pacific
Coast University School of Law; Anita Sinha, Practitioner-in-
Residence, American University, Washington College of Law.
Dan R. Smulian, Associate Professor of Clinical Law, Co-
Director, Safe Harbor Project, Brooklyn Law School; Gemma
Solimene, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Fordham
University School of Law; Jayashri Srikantiah, Professor of
Law and Director, Immigrants' Rights Clinic, Stanford Law
School; Juliet Stumpf, Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law
School; Maureen A. Sweeney, Law School Associate Professor,
University of Maryland Carey School of Law; Barbara Szweda,
Associate Professor, Lincoln Memorial University Duncan
School of Law.
Margaret H. Taylor, Professor of Law, Wake Forest
University School of Law; David Thronson, Associate Dean for
Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Michigan State
University College of Law; Allison Brownell Tirres, Associate
Professor & Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, DePaul
University College of Law; Scott Titshaw, Associate
Professor, Mercer University School of Law; Phil Torrey,
Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School, Clinical Instructor,
Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, Harvard Law
School; Enid Trucios-Haynes, Interim Director, Muhammad Ali
Institute for Peace and Justice, Professor of Law, Louis D.
Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville;
Diane Uchimiya, Professor of Law, Director of Experiential
Learning, Director of the Justice and Immigration Clinic,
University of La Verne College of Law; Gloria Valencia-Weber,
Professor Emerita, University of New Mexico School of Law;
Sheila I. Velez Martinez, Assistant Clinical Professor of
Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law; Alex Vernon,
Acting Director of Asylum and Immigrant Rights Law Clinic,
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Ave Maria School of Law;
Rose Cuison Villazor, Professor of Law & Martin Luther King
Jr. Hall Research Scholar, University of California at Davis
School of Law.
Leti Volpp, Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of
Law, University of California, Berkeley; Jonathan Weinberg,
Professor of Law, Wayne State University; Deborah M.
Weissman, Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law,
School of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;
Lisa Weissman-Ward, Clinical Supervising Attorney & Lecturer
in Law, Stanford Law School; Anna R. Welch, Associate
Clinical Professor, University of Maine School of Law.
Virgil O. Wiebe, Professor of Law, Robins, Kaplan, Miller &
Ciresi Director of Clinical Education, Co-Director,
Interprofessional Center for Counseling and Legal Services,
University of St. Thomas School of Law, Minneapolis; Michael
J. Wishnie, William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law and
Deputy Dean for Experiential Education, Yale Law School;
Stephen Yale-Loehr, Adjunct Professor, Cornell University Law
School; Elizabeth Lee Young, Associate Professor of Law,
University of Arkansas School of Law.
Endnotes
\1\ See Letter to the President of the United States,
Executive authority to protect individuals or groups from
deportation (Sep. 3, 2014), https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/
_file/Law-Professor-Letter.pdf
\2\ See Thomas Aleinikoff, David Martin, Hiroshi Motomura &
Maryellen Fullerton, Immigration and Citizenship: Process and
Policy 778-88 (7th ed. 2012); Stephen H. Legomsky & Cristina
Rodriguez, Immigration and Refugee Law and Policy 629-32 (5th
ed. 2009); Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, The Role of Prosecutorial
Discretion in Immigration Law, 9 Conn. Pub. Int. L.J. 243
(2010), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract
_id=1476341.
\3\ Notably, in criminal law, prosecutorial discretion has
existed for hundreds of years. It was a common reference
point for the immigration agency in early policy documents
describing prosecutorial discretion. See Doris Meissner,
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner,
Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion 1 (Nov. 17, 2000)
[hereinafter Meissner Memo], http://
www.legalactioncenter.org/sites/default/files/docs/lac/
Meissner-2000-memo.pdf; Sam Bernsen, INS General Counsel,
Legal Opinion Regarding Service Exercise of Prosecutorial
Discretion (July 15, 1976), http://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/
prosecutorial-discretion/service-exercise-pd.pdf. See also,
e.g., Angela J. Davis, Arbitrary Justice (2007); Hiroshi
Motomura, Prosecutorial Discretion in Context: How Discretion
is Exercised Throughout our Immigration System, American
Immigration Council 2-3 (April 2012), http://
www.immigrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/docs/motomura_-
_discretion_in_context_04112.pdf; Stephen H. Legomsky, Legal
Authorities for DACA and Similar Programs (Aug. 24, 2014),
http://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/
2014/11/17/Editorial-Opinion/Graphics/
executive%20action%20legal%20points.pdf.
\4\ 8 C.F.R. Sec. 241.6.
\5\ INA Sec. 212(d)(5).
\6\ 8 C.F.R. Sec. 274a.12(c)(14).
\7\ Under INA Sec. 212(a)(9)(B)(ii), a person will not be
deemed unlawfully present during any ``period of stay
authorized by the Attorney General'' (now the Secretary of
Homeland Security). The Department of Homeland Security has
authorized such a period of stay for recipients of deferred
action. See Donald Neufeld, Lori Scialabba, & Pearl Chang,
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS),
Consolidation of Guidance Concerning Unlawful Presence for
Purposes of Sections 212(a)(9)(B)(i) and 212(a)(9)(C)(i)(I)
of the Act (May 6, 2009), http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/
files/USCIS/Laws/Memoranda/Static_Files_Memoranda/2009/
revision_redesign_AFM.PDF; U.S. Citizenship
[[Page H8381]]
and Immigration Services, Frequently Asked Questions (updated
June 5, 2014), http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/
consideration-deferred-action-childhood-arrivals-process/
frequently-asked-questions.
\8\ INA Sec. 103(a).
\9\ INA Sec. 242(g); see also Reno v. American-Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee, 525 U.S. 471 (1999).
\10\ INA Sec. 237(d)(2); 204(a)(1)(D)(i)(II,IV).
\11\ 8 C.F.R. Sec. 274a.12(c)(14).
\12\ Bernsen, supra note 3.
\13\ Meissner Memo, supra note 3. Notably, the Meissner
memorandum was a key reference point for related memoranda
issued during the Bush administration, among them a 2005
memorandum from Immigration and Customs Enforcement legal
head William Howard and a 2007 memorandum from ICE head Julie
Myers on the use of prosecutorial discretion when making
decisions about undocumented immigrants who are nursing
mothers.
14 John Morton, Director, U.S. Immigration &
Customs Enforcement, Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion
Consistent with the Civil Immigration Enforcement Priorities
of the Agency for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of
Aliens (June 17, 2011), available at http://www.ice.gov/
doclib/secure-communities/pdf/prosecutorial-discretion-
memo.pdf. [hereinafter Morton Memo].
15 See e.g., Lennon v. Immigration &
Naturalization Service, 527 F.2d 187, 191 n.5 (2d Cir. 1975);
Soon Bok Yoon v. INS, 538 F.2d 1211, 1213 (5th Cir. 197 6);
Vergel v. INS, 536 F.2d 755 (8th Cir. 1976); David v. INS,
548 F.2d 219 (8th Cir. 1977); Nicholas v. INS, 590 F.2d 802
(9th Cir. 1979).
16 See Arizona v. United States, 132 S. Ct.
2492, 2499 (2012).
17 525 U.S. 471 (1999). One source suggests that
DHS has resources to remove about 400,000 or less than 4% of
the total removable population. See Morton memo, supra note
14.
18 For example, of the 698 deferred action cases
processed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement between
October 1, 2011, and June 30, 2012, the most common
humanitarian reasons for a grant were: Presence of a USC
dependent; Presence in the United States since childhood;
Primary caregiver of an individual who suffers from a serious
mental or physical illness; Length of presence in the United
States; and Suffering from a serious mental or medical care
condition. See Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, My Great FOIA
Adventure and Discoveries of Deferred Action Cases at ICE, 27
Geo. Immigr. L.J. 345, 356-69 (2013), http://papers.ssrn.com/
sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_ id=2195758. See also, Shoba
Sivaprasad Wadhia, Relics of Deferred Action, The Hill
(2014), http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/civil-rights/
224744-relics-of-deferred-action.
19 See Marvine Howe, New Policy Aids Families of
Aliens, N.Y. Times (March 5, 1990), http://www.nytimes.com/
1990/03/05/nyregion/new-policy-aids-families-of-aliens.html.
20 See 67 Interpreter Releases 204 (Feb. 26,
1990); 67 Interpreter Releases 153 (Feb. 5, 1990). Bush's
policy followed a narrower 1987 executive order by President
Reagan's immigration commissioner that applied only to
children. 64 Interpreter Releases 1191 (Oct. 26, 1987).
Congress later in 1990 legislatively provided some of them a
path to legalization. Immigration and Nationality Act of
1990, Pub. L. 101-649, 301, 104 Stat. 4978, http://
www.justice.gov/eoir/IMMACT1990.pdf.
21 See Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Response, In
Defense of DACA, Deferred Action, and the DREAM Act, 91 Tex.
L. Rev. See Also 59, n.46 (2013), http://papers.ssrn.com/
sol3/papers.cfm?abstract__id=2195735, citing Press Release,
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS Announces
Interim Relief for Foreign Students Adversely Impacted by
Hurricane Katrina (Nov. 25, 2005), http://www.uscis.gov/
sites/default/files/files/pressrelease/
F1Student_11_25_05_PR.pdf.
22 DED Granted Country-Liberia, U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration, http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-
protected-status-deferred-enforced-departure/ded-granted-
country-liberia/ded-granted-country-liberia (last visited
Nov. 22, 2014).
23 Legomsky & Rodriguez, Immigration and Refugee
Law and Policy, supra note 2, at 1115-17; See also David
Reimers, Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to
America 202 (1986).
24 For a broader discussion about the
relationship between class size and constitutionality, see
Wadhia, Response, In Defense of DACA, Deferred Action, and
the DREAM Act, supra note 20.
25 U.S. Const. art. II, 3.
26 U.S. ICE, FY 2013 ICE Immigration Removals,
http://www.ice.gov/removal-statistics/ (last visited Nov. 22,
2014); Marc R. Rosenblum & Doris Meissner, The Deportation
Dilemma: Reconciling Tough and Humane Enforcement, Migration
Policy Institute (April 2014), http://
www.migrationpolicy.org/research/deportation-dilemma-
reconciling-tough-humane-enforcement.
27 For a broader discussion of the
administrative law values associated with prosecutorial
discretion, see Hiroshi Motomura, Immigration Outside the Law
19-55, 185-92 (2014); Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Sharing
Secrets: Examining Deferred Action and Transparency in
Immigration Law, 10 U. N. H. L. Rev. 1 (2012) (also providing
a proposal for designing deferred action procedures), http://
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_ id=1879443.
* all institutional affiliations are for identification
purposes only
Mr. McGOVERN. I enter into the Record a November 29 letter to Senate
and House Judiciary Committee Chairmen Leahy and Goodlatte and the
ranking members, Grassley and Conyers, from four former INS general
counsels from the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations on the
President's authority to take lawful executive action on immigration.
Four Former INS/USCIS General Counsels on President's Authority To Act
on Immigration
Nov 29, 2014.
Hon. Patrick Leahy
Hon. Chuck Grassley
Hon. Bob Goodlatte
Hon. John Conyers, Jr.
We are writing as former General Counsels of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service or former Chief
Counsels of U.S. Citzenship and Immigration Services. As you
know, the President on November 20 anounced a package of
measures designed to deploy his limited immigration
enforcement resources in the most effective way. These
measures included an expansion of Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the creation of Deferred Action
for Parental Accountabilty (DAPA). We take no positions on
the policy judgments that those actions reflect, but we have
all studied the relevant legal parameters and wish to express
our collective view that the President's actions are well
within his legal authority.
Some 135 law professors who currently teach or write in the
area of immigration law signed a November 25, 2014 letter to
the same effect. Rather than repeat the points made in that
letter, we simply attach it here and go on record as stating
that we agree wholeheartedly with its legal analysis and its
conclusions.
Respectfully,
Stephen Legomsky,
The John S. Lehman University Professor, Washington
University School of Law, Former Chief Counsel, U.S.
Citzenship and Immigration Services.
Roxana Bacon,
Former Chief Counsel, U.S. Citzenship and Immigration
Services.
Paul W. Virtue,
Partner, Mayer Brown LLP, Former General Counsel,
Immigration and Naturalization Service,
Bo Cooper,
Partner, Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loew, Former General
Counsel, Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Garcia).
Mr. GARCIA. Mr. Speaker, I am a very fortunate man. I am the son of
immigrants. My parents came here at the ages of 17 and 18,
respectively. Through the great fortune that we had, they were
adjusted, and they were part of this great Nation, but since then, many
more have come after.
In particular, I represent a community that is almost 69 percent
Hispanic, the majority of which were born in a foreign land. The
reality is that our immigration system for years has worked and has
worked efficiently to make what we do better than any other nation in
the world: we make Americans.
In the last decade and a half, this system has ground to a halt. In
the last few years, our President has moved steadily to use his
executive power to try to make the system work a little bit better. I
believe that is an important step.
But we had an opportunity. We had an opportunity in this House to
pass the Senate version that received 68 votes, something that would
have made the system function better, brought more investment into
America, more dollars into Federal revenue; yet the House punted. I am
appreciative of the President's action because he is well within
executive power.
If the other side does not like the President's action, they can
bring up the Senate bill. There are enough votes in this House to pass
it. We will have an orderly process. It is not a perfect bill, but it
does do the right thing, which fixes a broken immigration system.
I want to beg the other side to understand the implications that
fighting on this issue has. This is a nation of laws, there is no
question on that, but the
[[Page H8382]]
executive has plenary authority in this area. The time has come to
move, since this House would not move.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text
of the amendment along with extraneous material that I will offer in
the Record if we defeat the previous question immediately prior to the
vote on the previous question.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Massachusetts?
There was no objection.
Mr. McGOVERN. That basically will be the text of H.R. 15, the Senate-
passed comprehensive immigration reform bill. We could bring this issue
to a close right now.
I reserve the balance of my time.
{time} 1015
Mr. NUGENT. If I could inquire, I thought the gentleman was closing.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, there is some confusion here that the
gentleman may be offering to amend the rule. I am just trying to get a
sense for what is going on over there before I yield back all of my
time.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, shortly, I will be offering an amendment to
the rule, which is necessary to alleviate the budgetary point of order
that currently lies against the defense bill. In addition to clearing a
point of order, we hope it will expedite the consideration in the
Senate of this critically important bill.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, we have one additional speaker that just
showed up, and so I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms.
Jackson Lee).
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from
Massachusetts for his leadership, and the manager.
Many of us, Mr. Speaker, have come to the floor of the House time and
time again and supported our troops, supported their families, wanted
them to have increased dollars in their compensation; but today I come
with a heavy heart that issues of war and peace are in this bill, the
authorization bill, and we have not had the time to debate this in
front of the American people. Sending young men and women in the midst
of a storm in war where they may lose their life, and yet this majority
refuses to give us hours of time to show the American people what the
commitment is, I raise a question.
And then, of course, a bill that attacks the constitutional authority
of the President of the United States in an immigration bill that is
closed in falsehoods because the President is not going beyond the law;
he is not changing the law. He has the authority to use his executive
power for humanitarian relief, and he is saving the parents of children
who are citizens.
This is a wrong rule, and I ask my colleagues to vote against it.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my
time.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts has 2\1/2\
minutes remaining. The gentleman from Florida has 8\1/4\ minutes
remaining.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, let me close by again asking my colleagues
to vote against this closed rule--triple closed rule. It unfortunately
has become a pattern in this Congress, the most closed Congress in the
history of the United States of America.
I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' as well because we are
talking about a defense bill, but we are not allowed to have a debate
or a vote on any of these wars that we are involved in. If we truly
care about our troops, if we are truly living up to our constitutional
responsibilities, we ought to have a debate and a vote. We ought not to
duck it. We ought not to leave town without talking about these serious
issues.
On the issue of immigration, rather than this silly, petty, ugly,
symbolic bill that is being brought to the floor, if my colleagues
don't approve of the President's executive action, then help me defeat
the previous question and we will bring up H.R. 15, the comprehensive
immigration reform bill that the Senate passed in a bipartisan way, and
we can get that job done and end all this nonsense and end all this
rancor that we have seen unfold here in the House.
We could do better than what is on display today. I regret very much
that the Republican leadership continues to insist on this closed
process which stifles debate and prevents us from debating and voting
on important issues.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I think I have made my frustrations readily clear in regards to how
we got to the current NDAA. It is troubling to see how the Senate's
failure to act is going to end up costing our troops. To me, it is just
not right to the men and women, the 1 percent of America that put their
lives on the line for this country the Senate has turned a blind eye
to.
I am optimistic, though, that with the changing of the guard in
January, that we are actually going to get things done. We are actually
going to pass legislation to address the issues that are so confronting
this Nation that deserve to have discussions in both Houses. It is
important that the Senate act. It is important that the Senate has
debate. So I think that at the end of the day, in January with the
changing of the guard, we are going to see a different set of facts as
Congress moves forward.
I am really hopeful that Congress takes the steps, and Mr. McGovern
talks about it, but we need to talk about the AUMF. We need to talk
about those guiding principles that set up where we are today, things
that were passed long before I came to Congress, authorizations that go
back 12 to 13 years ago.
The landscape has changed, and we need to absolutely have a strong
and long, hard debate in regards to how we authorize the use of force
in the future in specific instances, as the Constitution requires.
When we talk about the Constitution, we talk about the President just
ignoring it, the administration sidestepping Congress whenever it sees
fit, the use of force is one of those areas, I think. And the same with
what this administration has done in the underlying bills that this
bill allows us to address in the President's recent executive order.
The bill reaffirms that Congress--Congress--has the power to write the
immigration laws. It reaffirms that the President must enforce the laws
that are currently on the books, not something that he wishes, but what
is currently law of the land.
Mr. Speaker, the President's actions have gotten so out of hand that
we now must pass bills to remind him of what the Constitution sets, and
that is a shame. We even have to remind the President of what he,
himself, has said in the past about what is the appropriate role of the
office of President.
Speaking in 2011 in a Univision town hall, the President stated:
With respect to the notion that I can just suspend
deportations through executive order, that is just not the
case because there are laws on the books.
He also said that Congress passes the laws, and it is the executive
branch's job to enforce and implement those laws, and then it is up to
the judiciary to interpret those laws if there is a question.
The President even said that there are enough laws on the books by
Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our
immigration system. That, for me, is simple enough. And the President
said that: through executive order, to ignore those congressional
mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President. I
didn't say that; he said that. I am not a lawyer; he is a lawyer, a
constitutional lawyer.
What he hasn't said to us, the American people, is in those 22
utterances where he said those things, why hasn't he justified to the
American people that maybe he was wrong when he said that, he didn't
get it right, he didn't understand. He never said anything like that.
What he has done is come back and to say: Do you know what--and he said
it before that--I have a pen and a phone. And he can do what he
pleases.
Mr. Speaker, this is an unfortunate time when we have to call the
President out for not following the Constitution. This is not something
that I look forward to. It is not something that I want to do. But it
is so important, as I have said before, that we respect the article I
power that this body has in the Constitution, that our
[[Page H8383]]
Founding Fathers thought it was so important that there be a separation
of powers so that there was no monarchy, so there was no one person
that can call all the shots. They sought it because they needed to
because of what the impression is that they left that they were under.
We are merely standing up for our rights as citizens of the United
States, as I believe we should be enforcing the constitutional
requirements, that founding document. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't
think so. I have been wrong in the past, but on this particular issue,
the Constitution is the document that we should live by. The
Constitution sets forth the operation of this government, not by whim
and not by decree, but by law. We are a nation of laws.
You have heard me talk about the NDAA, and I will say this to Mr.
McGovern as it relates to authorization of military force. I agree
wholeheartedly that we need to have a separate debate. We need to have
it when we have a partner across the other side of the Capitol that
will join in that debate about what we should be doing with the use of
force and what we do as it relates to our men and women that serve.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule and to support
the checks and balances our Founders so thoughtfully crafted.
Amendment Offered by Mr. Nugent
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment to the resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Page 2, line 14, insert before the period ``and the
amendment specified in section 5 of this resolution''.
At the end of the resolution, add the following:
Sec. 5. The amendment referred to in the first section of
this resolution is as follows: Strike section 3096 and insert
the following:
``SEC. 3096. PAYMENTS IN LIEU OF TAXES.
``For payments in lieu of taxes under chapter 69 of title
31, United States Code, which shall be available without
further appropriation to the Secretary of the Interior--
``(1) $33,000,000 for fiscal year 2015; and
``(2) $37,000,000 to be available for obligation and
payment beginning on October 1, 2015.
Funds available for obligation and payment under paragraph
(2) shall be paid in October 2015.''.
The material previously referred to by Mr. McGovern is as follows:
An Amendment to H. Res. 770 Offered By Mr. McGovern From Massachusetts
At the end of the resolution, add the following new
sections:
Sec. 5. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution the
Speaker shall, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule XVIII, declare
the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on
the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R.
15) to provide for comprehensive immigration reform and for
other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be
dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of
the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the
bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided among and
controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the
Committee on Judiciary. After general debate the bill shall
be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. All
points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. At
the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the
Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with
such amendments as may have been adopted. The previous
question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and
amendments thereto to final passage without intervening
motion except one motion to recommit with or without
instructions. If the Committee of the Whole rises and reports
that it has come to no resolution on the bill, then on the
next legislative day the House shall, immediately after the
third daily order of business under clause 1 of rule XIV,
resolve into the Committee of the Whole for further
consideration of the bill.
Sec. 6. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the
consideration of H.R. 15 as specified in section 5 of this
resolution.
____
The Vote on the Previous Question: What It Really Means
This vote, the vote on whether to order the previous
question on a special rule, is not merely a procedural vote.
A vote against ordering the previous question is a vote
against the Republican majority agenda and a vote to allow
the Democratic minority to offer an alternative plan. It is a
vote about what the House should be debating.
Mr. Clarence Cannon's Precedents of the House of
Representatives (VI, 308-311), describes the vote on the
previous question on the rule as ``a motion to direct or
control the consideration of the subject before the House
being made by the Member in charge.'' To defeat the previous
question is to give the opposition a chance to decide the
subject before the House. Cannon cites the Speaker's ruling
of January 13, 1920, to the effect that ``the refusal of the
House to sustain the demand for the previous question passes
the control of the resolution to the opposition'' in order to
offer an amendment. On March 15, 1909, a member of the
majority party offered a rule resolution. The House defeated
the previous question and a member of the opposition rose to
a parliamentary inquiry, asking who was entitled to
recognition. Speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R-Illinois) said:
``The previous question having been refused, the gentleman
from New York, Mr. Fitzgerald, who had asked the gentleman to
yield to him for an amendment, is entitled to the first
recognition.''
The Republican majority may say ``the vote on the previous
question is simply a vote on whether to proceed to an
immediate vote on adopting the resolution . . . [and] has no
substantive legislative or policy implications whatsoever.''
But that is not what they have always said. Listen to the
Republican Leadership Manual on the Legislative Process in
the United States House of Representatives, (6th edition,
page 135). Here's how the Republicans describe the previous
question vote in their own manual: ``Although it is generally
not possible to amend the rule because the majority Member
controlling the time will not yield for the purpose of
offering an amendment, the same result may be achieved by
voting down the previous question on the rule. . . . When the
motion for the previous question is defeated, control of the
time passes to the Member who led the opposition to ordering
the previous question. That Member, because he then controls
the time, may offer an amendment to the rule, or yield for
the purpose of amendment.''
In Deschler's Procedure in the U.S. House of
Representatives, the subchapter titled ``Amending Special
Rules'' states: ``a refusal to order the previous question on
such a rule [a special rule reported from the Committee on
Rules] opens the resolution to amendment and further
debate.'' (Chapter 21, section 21.2) Section 21.3 continues:
``Upon rejection of the motion for the previous question on a
resolution reported from the Committee on Rules, control
shifts to the Member leading the opposition to the previous
question, who may offer a proper amendment or motion and who
controls the time for debate thereon.''
Clearly, the vote on the previous question on a rule does
have substantive policy implications. It is one of the only
available tools for those who oppose the Republican
majority's agenda and allows those with alternative views the
opportunity to offer an alternative plan.
Mr. NUGENT. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I
move the previous question on the amendment and on the resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on ordering the previous
question.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 and clause 9 of rule
XX, this 15-minute vote on ordering the previous question on the
amendment and on the resolution will be followed by 5-minute votes on
adopting the amendment, if ordered, adopting the resolution, if
ordered, and suspending the rules and adopting H. Res. 758.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 227,
nays 191, not voting 16, as follows:
[Roll No. 546]
YEAS--227
Amash
Amodei
Bachmann
Bachus
Barletta
Barr
Barton
Benishek
Bentivolio
Bilirakis
Black
Blackburn
Boustany
Brady (TX)
Brat
Bridenstine
Brooks (AL)
Brooks (IN)
Broun (GA)
Buchanan
Bucshon
Burgess
Byrne
Calvert
Camp
Campbell
Capito
Carter
Cassidy
Chabot
Chaffetz
Clawson (FL)
Coffman
Cole
Collins (GA)
Collins (NY)
Conaway
Cook
Cotton
Cramer
Crawford
Crenshaw
Culberson
Daines
Davis, Rodney
Denham
Dent
DeSantis
DesJarlais
Diaz-Balart
Duffy
Duncan (SC)
Duncan (TN)
Ellmers
Farenthold
Fincher
Fitzpatrick
Fleischmann
Fleming
Flores
Forbes
Fortenberry
Foxx
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Gardner
Garrett
Gerlach
Gibbs
Gibson
Gingrey (GA)
Gohmert
Goodlatte
Gosar
Gowdy
Granger
Graves (GA)
Graves (MO)
Griffin (AR)
Griffith (VA)
Grimm
Guthrie
Hanna
Harper
Harris
Hartzler
Hastings (WA)
Heck (NV)
Hensarling
Herrera Beutler
Holding
Hudson
Huelskamp
Huizenga (MI)
Hultgren
Hunter
Hurt
Issa
Jenkins
Johnson (OH)
Johnson, Sam
Jolly
Jones
Jordan
Joyce
Kelly (PA)
King (IA)
King (NY)
Kingston
Kinzinger (IL)
Kline
Labrador
LaMalfa
Lamborn
[[Page H8384]]
Lance
Lankford
Latham
Latta
LoBiondo
Long
Lucas
Luetkemeyer
Lummis
Marchant
Marino
Massie
McCarthy (CA)
McCaul
McClintock
McHenry
McKeon
McKinley
McMorris Rodgers
Meadows
Meehan
Messer
Mica
Miller (FL)
Miller (MI)
Mullin
Mulvaney
Murphy (PA)
Neugebauer
Noem
Nugent
Nunes
Nunnelee
Olson
Palazzo
Paulsen
Pearce
Perry
Petri
Pittenger
Pitts
Poe (TX)
Pompeo
Posey
Price (GA)
Reed
Reichert
Renacci
Ribble
Rice (SC)
Rigell
Roby
Roe (TN)
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rohrabacher
Rokita
Rooney
Ros-Lehtinen
Roskam
Ross
Rothfus
Royce
Runyan
Ryan (WI)
Salmon
Sanford
Scalise
Schock
Schweikert
Scott, Austin
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shimkus
Shuster
Simpson
Smith (MO)
Smith (NE)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Southerland
Stewart
Stivers
Stockman
Stutzman
Terry
Thompson (PA)
Thornberry
Tiberi
Tipton
Turner
Upton
Valadao
Wagner
Walberg
Walden
Walorski
Weber (TX)
Webster (FL)
Wenstrup
Westmoreland
Whitfield
Williams
Wilson (SC)
Wittman
Wolf
Womack
Woodall
Yoder
Yoho
Young (AK)
Young (IN)
NAYS--191
Adams
Barber
Barrow (GA)
Bass
Beatty
Becerra
Bera (CA)
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (NY)
Blumenauer
Bonamici
Brady (PA)
Braley (IA)
Brown (FL)
Brownley (CA)
Bustos
Butterfield
Capps
Cardenas
Carney
Carson (IN)
Cartwright
Castor (FL)
Castro (TX)
Chu
Cicilline
Clark (MA)
Clarke (NY)
Clay
Clyburn
Cohen
Connolly
Conyers
Cooper
Costa
Courtney
Crowley
Cuellar
Cummings
Davis (CA)
Davis, Danny
DeFazio
DeGette
Delaney
DeLauro
DelBene
Deutch
Dingell
Doggett
Edwards
Ellison
Engel
Enyart
Eshoo
Esty
Farr
Fattah
Foster
Frankel (FL)
Fudge
Gabbard
Garamendi
Garcia
Grayson
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hahn
Hanabusa
Hastings (FL)
Heck (WA)
Higgins
Himes
Hinojosa
Holt
Honda
Horsford
Hoyer
Huffman
Israel
Jackson Lee
Jeffries
Johnson, E. B.
Kaptur
Keating
Kelly (IL)
Kennedy
Kildee
Kilmer
Kind
Kirkpatrick
Kuster
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Levin
Lewis
Lipinski
Loebsack
Lofgren
Lowenthal
Lowey
Lujan Grisham (NM)
Lujan, Ben Ray (NM)
Lynch
Maffei
Maloney, Carolyn
Maloney, Sean
Matheson
Matsui
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
McIntyre
McNerney
Meeks
Meng
Michaud
Miller, George
Moore
Moran
Murphy (FL)
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal
Nolan
Norcross
O'Rourke
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor (AZ)
Payne
Pelosi
Perlmutter
Peters (CA)
Peters (MI)
Peterson
Pingree (ME)
Pocan
Polis
Price (NC)
Quigley
Rahall
Rangel
Richmond
Roybal-Allard
Ruiz
Ruppersberger
Ryan (OH)
Sanchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schiff
Schneider
Schrader
Schwartz
Scott (VA)
Scott, David
Serrano
Sewell (AL)
Shea-Porter
Sherman
Sinema
Sires
Slaughter
Smith (WA)
Speier
Swalwell (CA)
Takano
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Titus
Tonko
Tsongas
Van Hollen
Vargas
Veasey
Vela
Visclosky
Walz
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Waxman
Welch
Wilson (FL)
Yarmuth
NOT VOTING--16
Aderholt
Bishop (UT)
Capuano
Cleaver
Coble
Doyle
Duckworth
Gallego
Hall
Johnson (GA)
McAllister
McCarthy (NY)
Miller, Gary
Negrete McLeod
Rush
Velazquez
{time} 1052
Mr. SCHIFF, Ms. PINGREE of Maine, Mr. HOYER, Ms. KUSTER, and Mr. WALZ
changed their vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
Mr. STEWART changed his vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
So the previous question was ordered.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Recorded Vote.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. This is a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 232,
noes 191, not voting 11, as follows:
[Roll No. 547]
AYES--232
Amash
Amodei
Bachmann
Bachus
Barber
Barletta
Barr
Barton
Benishek
Bentivolio
Bilirakis
Black
Blackburn
Boustany
Brady (TX)
Brat
Bridenstine
Brooks (AL)
Brooks (IN)
Broun (GA)
Buchanan
Bucshon
Burgess
Byrne
Calvert
Camp
Campbell
Capito
Carter
Cassidy
Chabot
Chaffetz
Clawson (FL)
Coffman
Cole
Collins (GA)
Collins (NY)
Conaway
Cook
Costa
Cotton
Cramer
Crawford
Crenshaw
Culberson
Daines
Davis, Rodney
Denham
Dent
DeSantis
DesJarlais
Diaz-Balart
Duffy
Duncan (SC)
Duncan (TN)
Ellmers
Farenthold
Fincher
Fitzpatrick
Fleischmann
Fleming
Flores
Forbes
Fortenberry
Foxx
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Gardner
Garrett
Gerlach
Gibbs
Gibson
Gingrey (GA)
Gohmert
Goodlatte
Gosar
Gowdy
Granger
Graves (GA)
Graves (MO)
Griffin (AR)
Griffith (VA)
Grimm
Guthrie
Hanna
Harper
Harris
Hartzler
Hastings (WA)
Heck (NV)
Hensarling
Herrera Beutler
Holding
Hudson
Huelskamp
Huizenga (MI)
Hultgren
Hunter
Hurt
Issa
Jenkins
Johnson (OH)
Johnson, Sam
Jolly
Jordan
Joyce
Kelly (PA)
King (IA)
King (NY)
Kingston
Kinzinger (IL)
Kirkpatrick
Kline
Labrador
LaMalfa
Lamborn
Lance
Lankford
Latham
Latta
LoBiondo
Long
Lucas
Luetkemeyer
Lummis
Marchant
Marino
Massie
McAllister
McCarthy (CA)
McCaul
McClintock
McHenry
McIntyre
McKeon
McKinley
McMorris Rodgers
Meadows
Meehan
Messer
Mica
Miller (FL)
Miller (MI)
Mullin
Mulvaney
Murphy (PA)
Neugebauer
Noem
Nugent
Nunes
Nunnelee
Olson
Palazzo
Paulsen
Pearce
Perry
Peterson
Petri
Pittenger
Pitts
Poe (TX)
Pompeo
Posey
Price (GA)
Reed
Reichert
Renacci
Ribble
Rice (SC)
Rigell
Roby
Roe (TN)
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rohrabacher
Rokita
Rooney
Ros-Lehtinen
Roskam
Ross
Rothfus
Royce
Runyan
Ryan (WI)
Salmon
Sanford
Scalise
Schock
Schweikert
Scott, Austin
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shimkus
Shuster
Simpson
Smith (MO)
Smith (NE)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Southerland
Stewart
Stivers
Stockman
Stutzman
Terry
Thompson (PA)
Thornberry
Tiberi
Tipton
Turner
Upton
Valadao
Wagner
Walberg
Walden
Walorski
Weber (TX)
Webster (FL)
Wenstrup
Westmoreland
Whitfield
Williams
Wilson (SC)
Wittman
Wolf
Womack
Woodall
Yoder
Yoho
Young (AK)
Young (IN)
NOES--191
Adams
Barrow (GA)
Bass
Beatty
Becerra
Bera (CA)
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (NY)
Blumenauer
Bonamici
Brady (PA)
Braley (IA)
Brown (FL)
Brownley (CA)
Bustos
Butterfield
Capps
Cardenas
Carney
Carson (IN)
Cartwright
Castor (FL)
Castro (TX)
Chu
Cicilline
Clark (MA)
Clarke (NY)
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Cohen
Connolly
Conyers
Cooper
Courtney
Crowley
Cuellar
Cummings
Davis (CA)
Davis, Danny
DeFazio
DeGette
Delaney
DeLauro
DelBene
Deutch
Dingell
Doggett
Edwards
Ellison
Engel
Enyart
Eshoo
Esty
Farr
Fattah
Foster
Frankel (FL)
Fudge
Gabbard
Garamendi
Garcia
Grayson
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hahn
Hanabusa
Hastings (FL)
Heck (WA)
Higgins
Himes
Hinojosa
Holt
Honda
Horsford
Hoyer
Huffman
Israel
Jackson Lee
Jeffries
Johnson (GA)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones
Kaptur
Keating
Kelly (IL)
Kennedy
Kildee
Kilmer
Kind
Kuster
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Levin
Lewis
Lipinski
Loebsack
Lofgren
Lowenthal
Lowey
Lujan Grisham (NM)
Lujan, Ben Ray (NM)
Lynch
Maffei
Maloney, Carolyn
Maloney, Sean
Matheson
Matsui
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
McNerney
Meeks
Meng
Michaud
Miller, George
Moore
Moran
Murphy (FL)
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal
Nolan
Norcross
O'Rourke
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor (AZ)
Payne
Pelosi
Perlmutter
Peters (CA)
Peters (MI)
Pingree (ME)
Pocan
Polis
Price (NC)
Quigley
Rahall
Rangel
Richmond
Roybal-Allard
Ruiz
Ruppersberger
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Sanchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schiff
Schneider
Schrader
Schwartz
Scott (VA)
Scott, David
Serrano
Sewell (AL)
Shea-Porter
Sherman
Sinema
Sires
Slaughter
Smith (WA)
Speier
Swalwell (CA)
Takano
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Titus
Tonko
Tsongas
Van Hollen
Vargas
Veasey
Vela
Velazquez
Visclosky
Walz
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Waxman
Welch
Wilson (FL)
Yarmuth
[[Page H8385]]
NOT VOTING--11
Aderholt
Bishop (UT)
Capuano
Coble
Doyle
Duckworth
Gallego
Hall
McCarthy (NY)
Miller, Gary
Negrete McLeod
{time} 1101
So the resolution, as amended, was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
____________________